


paradiso.

by invective



Series: black mirror verse [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Reunions, Technology, Time Travel, Virtual Reality, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:37:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9018598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invective/pseuds/invective
Summary: five hours in paradise is all they need.( inspired by black mirror: 'san junipero.' )





	

**Author's Note:**

> imagine my surprise when i choose _this_ episode out of the entirety of season 3 to write.
> 
> everyone who's suffered from the first two parts of this series deserves to take a breather. :)

it’s 1987. kim junmyeon does not feel overdressed in his gray cashmere sweater, khaki pants, and brown loafers. he ought to feel out of place, surrounded by bright, neon hues and clothes of varying degrees of “very tight,” but perhaps he has gotten used to standing out. cyndi lauper croons through early pioneer speakers, bodies gyrating against one another rhythmically. junmyeon would never dream of doing that with anybody. so why, one may ask, is he even here? is he someone’s watchful brother, here to make sure nothing gets so out of control that the cops would have to be called? or is he the asian brian johnson –– that generic, shy goodie-two-shoes poindexter unable to socially interact with anyone in his age group?

he prefers to think that he’s neither –– he’s merely an observer, watching the past, reminiscing. he knows the grain’s latest update is something that could provide a similar experience, but cheongug is different. instead of seeing, he’s _living_. rather than pulling the wool of old memories over his eyes, junmyeon steps into a whole new, tangible world. he grabs a red solo cup and fills it with an unopened bottle of budweiser. he takes a sip, lets the less-than-pleasant taste sit on his tongue.

when junmyeon was younger, he would’ve never dreamed something like this could be possible. the notion that a whole entire virtual city could be created and housed in a server room was unfathomable. but then again, so were the bereavement chat and grains. artificially resurrecting the dead and manufacturing universal photogenic memory was simply impossible. some sci-fi stories sitting in some creative recluse’s brain, mere thoughts. just dreams, back then.

but cheongug was real. it had many names –– paradiso, eden, ciel, tiantang. in junmyeon’s native language, it was cheongug, and thus it was marketed to him as such. his own personal heaven. and it _is_ heaven. he has fun here. it’s hard to find things that are fun after you turn twenty-five, forced to deal with actual responsibilities attached with the era of adulthood. but cheongug manages to be a rarity. and a good one too, at that.

he always feels a distinct burn of pity for people who will never know what utopia feels like. cheongug is a place free of worries, absent of aftermaths. illness is not programmed into the system, allowing self-destructive behavior to be non-destructive. people can drink, smoke, and hurt themselves all they want without consequence. it is a place that serves as a respite from the crushing and defeating nature of reality. escapism at its finest. junmyeon has been a frequenter for little over a year, and he has had no complaints yet.

but, as it always is, nothing is ever perfect –– he realizes this with a jolt as a lumbering tie-dye wearing giant argues with a much more petite girl whilst walking backwards. as much as he wishes otherwise, junmyeon would recognize those shoulders and huge hands anywhere. not to mention that deep voice. those high cheekbones and the soft and pudgy flesh stretched over them. those thick, angular brows and that gummy smile. _anywhere_. he’d memorized that body years ago. junmyeon’s breath catches in his throat as the colossus’s gaze turns toward him and they lock eyes. though he looks away, it’s too late.

“junmyeon!” his name spills forth from the behemoth’s mouth. almost like cheongug is playing some cosmic joke on him, junmyeon sees a huge cluster of people behind as he turns to flee. junmyeon’s by no means large –– in fact, to most, he’d be _small_ –– so there’s no way to escape before the titan takes the three long strides he needs to get to junmyeon.

he resigns himself to his fate with a heavy sigh. “yifan,” he mumbles once the goliath is in earshot. junmyeon jumps in surprise as yifan winds a long arm around him and squeezes him tight. his face is near unreadable at this proximity and with such low lighting. “what a surprise.”

“i can’t believe you remember me!” junmyeon bites back the _really?_ on the tip of his tongue. he momentarily forgets why yifan’s being so exaggerated until the girl he had been talking to stalks over and demands to know what’s going on. “ _jessica_ , this is my…” a noticeable pause. “… my step-brother, junmyeon. i haven’t seen him in forever –– what are the chances he’d be at cheongug at the same place and time as me?”

jessica looks as unconvinced as junmyeon feels. “ _right_. well. can you excuse us for a moment, junmyeon? yifan and i were having a very important and very serious conversation, so if you’d be so kind as to let us _finish_ ––”

“it really wasn’t that important,” yifan cuts in, grip hard on junmyeon’s shoulder. jessica’s brow furrows, scandalized and annoyed. junmyeon is trying his best to chart all possible routes of escape. “i was thinking i’d catch up with my brother, actually, so if _you’ll_ excuse _us_ ––” before jessica even has a chance to respond, yifan spins on his heel and disappears (not quite; his head still peeks out from the top) into the crowd, dragging poor, hapless junmyeon with him.

he only stops when they’re at the far end of the dance floor, where jessica will have to navigate through at least sixty sweaty, twirling figures to reach them. judging by her expression, yifan is not worth the effort. still, she hasn’t quite walked away. junmyeon lifts his arm and nudges yifan with it. finally, he lets go. “sorry,” yifan says, and in the same breath blurts out, “dance with me.”

“what?”

“she’s still looking at us. please, junmyeon.” yifan’s eyes are wide, the same puppy-dog look junmyeon used to employ on him years ago. “for old times’ sake.”

“if the only reason you dragged me all the way over here ––”

“as opposed to what? your little corner of sadness and loneliness?”

“–– to help you get rid of your clingy ex, then i’m leaving.” he starts to move, only for yifan to grab him by the shoulders.

“no, wait, she’s not my ex! i talked to her once or twice, maybe flirted here and there, but she’s been following me around and it’s _scary_ , she’s _not_ my style ––”

“i’m not –– i’m getting out of here.” he’s getting flustered; that much he can tell. he ducks under yifan’s arm and makes for the door, ignoring yifan’s cries of “wait!” as he makes his way out of the party.

his ears throb at the sudden absence of booming noise. music still blares from the house, but it’s nowhere near as extreme as the volume that now leaves a dull ring and muffles everything else. junmyeon’s about to hail a cab back to his designated apartment, already pulling out his phone, but a large hand encases his elbow and yanks him back. he falls straight into yifan’s broad chest.

yifan frowns, a crease appearing between his brows. “you shouldn’t have run off like that. can’t we talk, junmyeon? i was serious when i said i wanted to catch up. i wasn’t saying that just to get rid of jessica.” at the very least, he _looks_ sincere and earnest. but junmyeon’s never been able to gauge yifan’s level of disingenuity for as long as he’s known him. he’s aware that the crush causing lack of awareness is problematic. he’s been coping with it for years, after all.

“what makes you think i _want_ to talk to you, hm? after all this time, wouldn’t i have looked for you if i wanted to keep in contact?” junmyeon came to cheongug in order to relax, to let go and have fun. he was decidedly not doing any of that. instead, his heart is racing and he’s starting to stare deeply into yifan’s eyes and –– _fuck_ , he’s not going back down that road, that spiraling avenue of agony and unrequited love and embarrassment and mockery. he’d left all that behind when yifan left _him_ behind. he came for nostalgia, not to dwell on past mistakes.

“junmyeon,” yifan breathes, leaning down ever so slightly. junmyeon can smell is usual cologne, and he knows it’s too much. “about all those years ago, what i really meant to say was ––”

“i’m engaged,” junmyeon blurts, and sprints away, face burning.

…

junmyeon fell in love with yifan at all of five years of age. funny (and a little sad) to realize he’s still been carrying a torch for him so many years later.

back then, only three people lived in his house. his mother, his twin brother, and him. he and seokjin were latchkey kids, their mother taking multiple jobs in order to keep them at the bare minimum of middle class. but before the twins were old enough to occupy their mother’s time working at school, they were left at their neighbor’s house. he had a boy around their age –– just a year older.

that other boy was, as one would guess, wu yifan.

yifan’s father was a translator who worked at home. mr. wu was a naturally perfect candidate to take care of a pair of five year-olds until their mother got off work at six pm. all he needed to do was let the three boys play together and make them food when they were hungry. otherwise, he would be doing his job, transcribing chinese textbooks on organic chemistry and other medical texts. in retrospect, this is probably where seokjin’s love for medicine came from, perched daily on the lap of yifan’s father while he worked. seokjin’s predisposition to the boy’s parent rather than the boy himself irked yifan, so he and junmyeon spent more time together to spite him. unfortunately for yifan, seokjin couldn’t care less.

junmyeon couldn’t complain. barely exiting toddler-hood, he was already getting moony-eyed over his older neighbor –– at the very same time his mother was falling in love as well, with yifan’s father.

( junmyeon wasn’t the only person who was disheartened when he started school. losing yifan for a year was hard enough; only seeing him at recess was torture. )

junmyeon’s mother was sweet and hardworking. she cared diligently for yifan when his father left gwacheon for seoul during the weekends for his work, tended to him like her own son. yifan adored her, viewing her as a replacement for his absent mother. those two factors, in conjunction with his own feelings for her, led yifan’s father to fall in love with her in return. by the time junmyeon and seokjin turned ten, the two were married.

at first, the changes in their lives were purely superficial. rather than transferring between two adjacent condos, the kims moved into the wu home. the twins occupied the former spare bedroom, while yifan was kicked out of his father’s room (“you’re eleven!” his father had said incredulously. junmyeon felt embarrassed on yifan’s behalf. “even junnie and jinnie can sleep by themselves!”) and so the boys had gotten a roommate. at the time, fitting three prepubescent boys in a single bedroom meant for one adult was no problem. yifan was pretty tall and gangly for his age, but seokjin was average and junmyeon small, despite being the elder of the twins. they were kept in close proximity, and it wasn’t really an issue back then.

the assumption was that junmyeon’s crush, which he had confessed to his mother while she and mr. wu had barely started dating, would fade over time as yifan became more of a brother than a friend.

( “but i already have a brother,” junmyeon scowled, nose scrunched up. “i have seokjin. i don’t want yifan to be my brother.”

“you’re still young, junnie. yifan was your first friend; of course you’d feel attached to him.” his mother took his hand gently, rubbing her thumb over his smooth skin. “but that isn’t love, honey. not how you love a boyfriend or a girlfriend. it’s how you love a brother.”

junmyeon was skeptical, but recognized that his mother’s age also came with wisdom. for the most part, she spoke the truth; there was a possibility she could be in the wrong here, but it wasn’t large. )

her assumption was wrong. his crush only got worse as time went on and they were stuffed in the same room. seokjin alone, who had no problem calling mr. wu ‘baba’ and yifan ‘gege,’ was not much of a buffer. he had his own concerns and worries, and quickly decided that being the youngest didn’t stop him from being too cool for his brothers. he ran off on his own, making friends with so many people junmyeon lost track. thus, the elder twin’s feelings were allowed to blossom.

at thirteen, junmyeon couldn’t stop thinking about kissing yifan, heart ba-dumping every time the older boy so much as smiled at him. it was a far jump from just wanting to fit their fingers together. there was a difference from wanting to hug him all the time at age twelve to wanting the weight of yifan’s body to hold him down as they kissed each other breathless. from playful taps and roughhousing to wandering hands –– but junmyeon always tried to keep his mind on the right side of chaste. he loved looking at yifan and touching him, but he loved yifan as a person more.

despite his intimidating visage, large jowls and a permanent scowl yifan slowly grew into as he aged, the boy was nothing short of a dork. he was earnest, a little awkward because of it. but he was also genuinely good. there wasn’t a single bone in his body predisposed to mean-spirited mockery; rather, he fell along the lines of friendly teasing, and even that was rare. yifan wasn’t quite bright –– at times, he was even dense –– but he worked hard to understand whatever he didn’t. yifan was tolerant and respectful. yifan had the most radiant (albeit rare) smile, a glow set about him every time it split his face open. he listened carefully and attentively, always trying his best to focus his attention on the speaker. as if anyone could blame junmyeon for falling in love with _that_.

of course, he wasn’t perfect. yifan could be patient, but a temper still lurked within him like a hungry, prowling wolf. he had a self-destructive streak, raised to believe that hardship bred excellence and that misery bred character, as well as a tendency to snap at junmyeon whenever he tried to help as a result. they never fought –– at least not like the long and loud arguments junmyeon frequently had with seokjin –– but there was always a tension around them for weeks after each tiff. junmyeon couldn’t help but wonder if yifan viewed him as nothing more than a nuisance. they always managed to make up in the end, but that didn’t mean the resentment wasn’t there.

in the end, though, it seemed junmyeon’s mother was half-right. his feelings for yifan never faded into platonic fraternity, but they did end up becoming more distant than they were before. in an effort to get out of yifan’s hair, he’d turned to fostering his much-neglected relationship with his brother, proof that not every pair of twins were magnetized to one another. his change in priorities helped. while naturally close, seokjin verbalized his affection and liking for his brother more. they actually hung out, and junmyeon learned the names of his brother’s friends.

of course, it was only when junmyeon left him that yifan needed him most. at age seventeen, the same day yifan had signed with a huge entertainment agency, the boys came home to find mr. wu dead. an aneurysm. no one could have predicted his passing. both yifan and his step-mother were inconsolable, and seokjin refused to speak for three days straight. only junmyeon seemed to be the most functional out of them, leading to him believing he was a bad son. he was always critical of himself, but this was another matter entirely. a family member died and he wasn’t showing nearly as much sorrow as his mother or brothers. perhaps part of him always resented mr. wu for falling in love with his mother. but rather than being born out of oedipal jealousy, as some might expect, the umbrage junmyeon felt was over his lost relationship with yifan. if their parents hadn’t gotten married, the two might’ve stood a chance. and now the man was dead, junmyeon hardly shedding a tear. he was terrible.

to twist the proverbial knife deeper, yifan was leaving. barely given enough time to grieve, he was expected to move into the company dorms and begin his training within a month. only then did junmyeon realize how poor his timing was. yifan was hurting, suffering alone, and junmyeon had all but abandoned him. part of him thought that he should’ve tried out with yifan, on the slight possibility that he too would get in and yifan wouldn’t be alone. but that meant leaving his mother and seokjin behind and junmyeon has never felt more selfish than when his stepfather died. he wasn’t really choosing his blood over yifan, though it was probably better if the latter believed this.

yifan contacted them monthly at first, but after a while, during which junmyeon could only assume that his training regimen dramatically intensified, he’d gotten around to communicating four times a year at most, barring major holidays. in the meantime, junmyeon was busy helping his family heal. seokjin bounced back fairly quickly, never one to dwell on sadness. their mother took a bit more effort to get her to start taking care of herself again. mr. wu was her second love, and she presumed he would be her last. junmyeon can’t imagine how broken he’d be if it were yifan who died.

it took some time (a time when yifan all but vanished), but she rebounded. some foreigner named spencer, who rubbed the twins the wrong way, came and swept her off her feet.

seokjin already kicked up a fuss when spencer made a joke about wanting to get their mother drunk to facilitate some inappropriate relations, but his conflict with junmyeon, and later both twins, proved to be much worse.

kim miyeon knew fell well both of her sons were gay. junmyeon had come forward to her about his sexuality regarding his less-than-familial feelings for his step-brother. seokjin never explicitly came out to her, but any good parent knows their child well enough to tell from a mile away. at the risk of being stereotypical, his favorite color was pink and he loved to look at himself in the mirror. he loved mocking his fraternal twin’s tendency to make naturally ugly faces while spending what he earned on bb cream and other assorted beauty products. miyeon and junmyeon were also pretty sure seokjin liked that one boy in his art history class a lot more than one generally likes a study buddy. so yes, she knew of her children’s inclinations, and that didn’t make her love them any less.

it’s not like it was 63 years ago, when marriage equality was finally legalized in the united states. things were better now. more utopian.

except spencer wasn’t anything of the sort.

he kept his prejudices under wraps whenever his “mimi” was around, but evidently, the twins’ pronounced dislike of him meant there was no need to pretend or hide. so his bigotry could be open and blatant, constantly subjecting the boys to jabs and jeers.

if it were any other person, they might’ve told their mother about his appalling behavior. however, spencer came right after mr. wu, at a point where their mother thought she might never be so loved again. the boys’ father left her, and mr. wu had, of course, died. so a healthy dose of idealization followed spencer around like a cloud of smog over beijing. his likely disingenuous worship made her glow. after seeing her miserable for so long, the boys could only hope she’d wisen up to his two-faced nature and leave him on her own. they’d tried to urge her with subtlety, but it seems yifan had left as much of an impression on her as she had on him.

neither seokjin nor junmyeon ever expected her to marry him.

it was a surprise. they’d gone on vacation (to which seokjin grumbled, “we never should’ve let her go _overseas_ with him.”) and come back engaged. junmyeon had almost wanted to cry when he found out the news, but not for the reason his mother believed. beyond being forced to deal with him as their mother’s significant other, junmyeon and seokjin were expected to refer to him as their new father. the boys were supposed to help plan the wedding, and miyeon had even jokingly suggested they help spencer with the bachelor party.

their union was a far cry from their mother’s happy second marriage. for one, she consulted them about marrying mr. wu, asking if they liked him enough for him to become their new appa. maybe she thought they didn’t need to give their approval. they were grown men –– seokjin had spent two years abroad at an american college to complete a majority of his pre-med requirements and was well on his way to becoming a licensed physician, while junmyeon had already gotten his teaching certificate and was looking for a job at the local elementary school.

even yifan, who had called while she was away to inform them that he would be debuting soon with (and leading) a five-member group soon, wasn’t told of the coming nuptials. rather, he’d texted junmyeon a picture of the wedding invitation he’d received in his fan mail box in the middle of his kindergarten class’s nap time, accompanying the image with an assortment of question marks. so it wasn’t as if junmyeon and seokjin were the only two people caught off guard by their mother’s split decision.

that was a poor consolation before the disaster that was their wedding.

…

it’s 1987 again. junmyeon spends an hour looking at different outfits to wear to the party before deciding to put on a gray cashmere sweater and khaki slacks. suitably dressed, he hails a cab and goes on his way.

just like last time, he makes himself a cup of beer and wanders around the house. he’s been here so many times before he knows every nook and cranny of the structure. but the people are never the same. there are plenty of familiar faces, of course, yet every time he ends up in cheongug, it’s different. the music selection changes as often as the brands of beer, people arrive at the house in different ways. people make new friends and break off old relationships. the world is old, but everything else is new.

even the way junmyeon sees yifan again is different.

junmyeon is minding his own business, trying to forget what he always comes to cheongug to forget, and is preparing himself a drink. the only thing conspicuous about him is his attire. he is otherwise completely hidden. people never give him a second glance anyways –– nat that he wants them to. his reason for returning cheongug are decidedly less hedonistic than most. he likes his solitude, prefers it, even. of course, he doesn’t end up being left alone tonight.

yifan crowds him into the bar, a sheepish grin on his face all the while. this time, there is no jessica trailing after him; as far as junmyeon can tell, he is alone tonight. but he had come out of nowhere and had done it so suddenly, junmyeon had no room or time to run. “what do you want,” junmyeon says in lieu of a greeting. there is no rise in inflection to indicate an inquiry.

“hello to you too, junmyeon,” yifan replies with a near imperceptible wince. his hands are buried in the pockets of his pants, shoulders hunched.

“you deserve it.”

yifan winces again. “i do. i just wish you hadn’t run away from me last time we spoke. i didn’t get a chance to explain myself.” he really does look earnest. junmyeon can’t decide whether or not that makes things worse. it makes it very difficult to slap yifan like he wants to. but junmyeon’s never been the slapping type anyway.

he settles for a scowl. “i think you explained yourself quite well. in three words, in fact. what else could you possibly have to elaborate on?”

“junmyeon, i was… afraid then. i had a reputation, an image to maintain. my livelihood depended on how the public perceived me. if any word had gotten out that i ––”

“that _what_ , yifan? that your brothers were fags? well, how did that career work out for you? really –– i never bothered to keep track.” junmyeon is loud, but the music is louder. nobody pays attention to them, though he almost wishes someone does, so that he doesn’t have to face yifan alone.

yifan’s face twists into something can’t quite decipher. it’s like guilt and remorse mixed with exasperation, and junmyeon is so caught up with figuring him out he almost misses his next words.

“that i loved you back, junmyeon. that i loved you, that i wanted to be with you, that my heart was off the market and always would be.” he takes junmyeon by the shoulders. it’s gentler than the gesture might imply. yifan’s hands are still huge. “i know it’s no excuse. but the entire industry is based off of the idea of… availability. i wasn’t the best singer or dancer or rapper. i looked out for my boys as best i could, but i can’t even say i was a good leader, no matter what they felt. if i couldn’t pretend to be someone’s pseudo-boyfriend, i was as good as useless to the company. they already hated me for being foreign. they hated that i wanted to make my own music and wanted to speak my mind. i couldn’t give them another reason to hate me or they’d fire me, permanently. they already pulled me out once. i couldn’t let them do that again, for good.

“the day i got in was the day my dad died, and… quitting, or getting kicked out, was like letting him down. so i kept my head down, did what i was told. i gave up my family for music. i gave _you_ up for music, and i hated that. i couldn’t just –– why are you crying? junmyeon, please, don’t ––”

he wasn’t even aware that yifan had looked away, only that he was blubbering and yifan was panicking and this was so embarrassing but everyone around them is too drunk or drugged to notice. “you… you love me?”

yifan huffs out a little laugh, pulling junmyeon to his chest. “of all the things i said, that’s the only thing you heard?”

“it’s a pretty important part,” junmyeon mumbles. anything else he has to say is lost the moment yifan kisses him. everything short circuits –– his brain, his lungs, his hands. the only thing junmyeon can feel is the press of yifan’s warm, plump lips on his own. his eyes flutter shut, hands coming to life to scrabble at yifan’s back and tug at his hair.

( junmyeon’s doing a pretty good of forgetting, tonight. so far. )

he’s still in shock, but it’s a good kind of shock. a disbelief that you’ve won the lottery. the heartstopping joy that wu yifan is kissing him.

and oh, by _god_ , is yifan kissing him. his technique leaves much to be desired, but he makes up for his lack of finesse with eagerness. junmyeon is sure his lips will be bruised, and he finds it remarkably difficult to keep track of yifan’s tongue as it explores his mouth. there’s so much _desire_ and passion, yet the way yifan holds him speaks so much more. “i’m sorry, forgive me,” his hands seem to gasp into junmyeon’s skin. he hasn’t felt this wanted in a long time.

still, junmyeon should still be angry, he knows. yifan still hurt him. nothing could take away the years of pain, not even a declaration of his love and a searing kiss. but, by god, if there’s ever going to be a moment in his life he enjoys, it’s going to be right now.

( still, the thought is a little unfair. junmyeon has enjoyed plenty. )

_“i love you,” yifan whispers against his lips. “i’ve always loved you, myeon.”_

the realization crushes him like a massive, unavoidable boulder. all those years, dancing around one another. the belief that they could never be anything more than close brothers –– a sentiment derived from self-centered parents who never considered that little junmyeon and little yifan fell in love at first sight. all of the dodging and surreptitious glances were for nothing but that’s all right. they’re here now. together.

yifan breaks their contact to take in a gulp of air. his eyes are bold, daring. junmyeon is all but melting in his arms. “do you wanna get in my car?”

junmyeon nods, and that’s how they drive out to his little shack on a beach that reminds him of dadaepo in busan –– at least, from what he can make out from the moonlight. they’ve got to have tracked sand into the house with their awkward fumbling –– made worse with yifan’s height –– but that’s the least of their problems as they tumble onto the waterbed. it isn’t an object very conducive to their brand of discombobulation. not that it stops either of them.

junmyeon’s heart is pounding, blood rushing through his ears. cheongug is a place of dreams, and here he was, living out his oldest fantasy.

his fingers drift under the hem of yifan’s shirt as he mouths against his jaw. junmyeon chuckles, knowing he’s better cut than yifan just by brushing past the elder’s tummy to tweak a nipple. yifan gasps and arches up toward him.

“wait,” yifan says breathlessly. he nudges junmyeon, halting his ministrations and making them lock eyes. for the first time since they’ve kissed, he seems wary. “myeon, you have to show me how.”

“what do you mean?”

the other looks away, cheeks red even in the darkness. “i’ve never… done _this_. i’ve never gotten this far.”

junmyeon blinks. it’s as if yifan is speaking greek. “what –– _never_? yifan, you were a _pop star_. you have to have had... i don’t know... groupies? and you never touched _anyone_?”

a small exhale leaves yifan’s lips –– nervous, a little afraid. “the company would’ve never let me. there wasn’t exactly a dating ban, but they’d throw you under the bus if you were ever caught with anyone. fans would eviscerate anyone they could get their hands on. and nobody was worth the trouble.” yifan clears his throat. “not like you were. would be. would _have_ been. i’m rambling.”

“you are,” junmyeon agrees with a laugh. he kisses yifan again, pointedly chaste. “a little. i don’t want to force you into anything you’re uncomfortable with. we can just stop here.” he glances at the clock. “we could just cuddle for an hour and a half.”

“no,” yifan blurts. his hands fly to junmyeon’s arms, as if he’s scared junmyeon will pull away. “i want. i want you. i want _this_. i just… need a little help.”

“okay.” junmyeon kisses him again. “okay. i’ll help you. do you want to be on top or on bottom tonight, yifan?”

yifan makes a face, glowing in embarrassment. “uh… i don’t… whatever you think is best, i guess…”

junmyeon hums. a hand makes its way to the center of yifan’s chest to push him back down onto the slightly-uncooperative mattress. yifan’s tense, eyes showing a trepidation his mouth won’t voice. junmyeon nuzzles him, but it doesn’t change much. “since it’s your first time,” he murmurs against yifan’s lips, “how about i bottom for tonight, all right?”

yifan nods wordlessly, his hand tracing junmyeon’s side.

“and if i do anything you don’t like, you tell me. if you want me to stop, say…” junmyeon pauses, thinking. “say ‘seokjin.’”

yifan wrinkles his nose. “got it.”

“good,” junmyeon says, and sets about kissing yifan all over. the older seems a little unsure of what to do with his hands; they doodle lines all over junmyeon’s back. as he presses pecks in a line down yifan’s chest, junmyeon knits their fingers together, marveling at how small his hands were in comparison. he’d consider himself and his body parts relatively proportionate, but it was more likely that he and yifan were just on a 1:1.1 scale. six inches in height marked quite a change in size.

which made him all the more concerned once he reached the obvious tent in yifan’s pants. tugging off his shirt to expose an expansive and pale torso was very different from approaching his erect cock. junmyeon runs his fingers over the clothed length tentatively, observing yifan’s reaction. the elder inhaled sharply, looking as though he was trying his hardest not to move or make noise. emboldened, junmyeon draws his hand over the fabric again, applying a little bit more pressure. a smirk grows on his face when a gasp bursts form yifan’s lips and his hips buck upwards.

“relax,” junmyeon says, and unbuttons yifan’s pants, dangerously slow. “i’m going to take very good care of you.”

junmyeon’s never been with a virgin before, but can remember when he himself was one, years ago. he was a nervous, flighty thing, terrified of his own shadow across rumpled linen sheets. he sees the same agitation in the gaze yifan levels him with as the latter lifts his lower half to slide his pants off. junmyeon rubs a reassuring thumb across the flesh of yifan’s thing.

he peels away yifan’s plain boxers, a pointed intake of breath leaving him too at the sight of the other’s member. it seems that fifteen year-old junmyeon’s dirty fantasies, born from yifan’s morning wood digging into his backside as they snuggled, were actually correct. with a large man comes a large dick. “huh,” junmyeon breathes.

“what?” he has to bite back a coo at yifan’s self-conscious tone. “what is it?”

he pumps his flushed length, other hand pressing yifan’s twitching hips back down. “it was a good ‘huh,’” he says. he dips his head to press a kiss to the tip. pre-cum paints his lips, and junmyeon’s tongue darts out kittenishly to swipe at the head.

the sounds a clearly oversensitive yifan is making are like sweet music to junmyeon’s ears, coaxing him on. his skills at giving head are subpar at best; he’s never really needed to put them to good use. his mouth is small and his gag reflex has never been on his side, but that isn’t to say he’s completely inept.

junmyeon slides his mouth over yifan’s cock, both hands making sure he doesn’t accidently jerk upwards and choke him. he can get as far as maybe a third of the way before it becomes too much, and pulls away to lave his tongue over the rest of his flesh. he jerks yifan swiftly, letting his saliva act as lubricant, and reattaches his mouth to yifan’s length. he wastes no time in hollowing his cheeks and moaning lowly, pulling back slightly only when yifan jolts roughly.

“sorry! sorry,” he hears from above him. long fingers come down to brush at his hair. junmyeon tries not to chuckle.

he resumes his ministrations, stroking and bobbing in tandem. he makes sure to flick his wrist as he strokes, creating a corkscrew motion that has yifan whimpering almost pathetically above him. he feels every muscle in yifan’s core clench under his fingertips as the man tries not to move. junmyeon’s jaw develops a slight ache before yifan’s fingers start to curl in his hair.

“myeon, i’m –– i’m gonna ––”

junmyeon sits up before yifan can come, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. hadn’t quite figured out how to make blowjobs not-messy, apparently.

yifan whines, an uncharacteristically high-pitched noise, but doesn’t complain any further when junmyeon pulls a bottle of lube from the bedside table.

cheongug always comes prepared; junmyeon would bet his left nut a bible resided in the second drawer. there was a packet of condoms next to the lube, but junmyeon always saw them as useless. everyone in cheongug was clean, anyway. it was impossible to contract stds, and pregnancy wasn’t achievable yet, at the risk of overpopulation. they really did go all out when designing the reality. but that isn’t what he should be thinking about now.

he leans back and starts shucking his khakis off. were he with anyone else, junmyeon might’ve been self-conscious about his choice of clothing. but he’s waited too long to have yifan like this –– and judging by the lust-heavy gaze yifan was piercing him with, he didn’t seem to mind.

“god,” yifan breathes, “ _junmyeon_.”

junmyeon purrs, tugging his sweater off. yifan’s eyes widen just slightly as he eyes his abdomen. “is.. is that accurate?” he mumbles.

taking his hand, junmyeon splays yifan’s fingers across his torso. “what do you think?” a light chuckle escapes him as yifan runs his hands over his body. “it tickles.”

yifan sits up and presses soft kisses to his collarbone. “i don’t know what to do,” he admits, tilting his face upward so junmyeon can kiss him. “i don’t… want you to do all the work.”

junmyeon laughs, easing yifan onto his back. they brush noses, and junmyeon traps his hands above his head. “you don’t have to do anything, yifan. just sit back, relax. maybe watch and learn.” he crawls back over to the lube, making sure to arch his back ever so slightly. he hears yifan inhale sharply, and comes quickly back, bottle in hand. he spreads a generous amount on his fingers and slides them down his torso. his face and chest warm when he notices yifan’s eyes are glued to his every movement.

if junmyeon so wanted, he could’ve bypassed the entire preparation process. one of the perks of entering a virtual world means you get to program it however you’d like. but junmyeon doesn’t –– particularly because he wants this moment to last. even if the limit is five hours per week, he still has plenty of time to spare. yes, it would be more convenient if he were already stretched to accommodate yifan’s girth. he’d turned off his pain receptors anyway. but then he’d miss the looks of pure carnality and hunger yifan is sending him. better yet, the small gasp he makes as he watches junmyeon’s finger slip inside of his hole.

“holy fuck,” yifan says.

junmyeon growls low in his throat as he gets knuckle-deep, swirling his finger lightly. the angle is awkward, so he bends his knees and bends further back, other hand pumping his erection slowly. a second finger joins the first and he starts to scissor himself open. the squelching noises make the tips of his ears burn, but yifan doesn’t seem to mind.

“touch yourself,” junmyeon gasps as his ring finger joins his index and middle. “touch yourself for me, yifan.”

yifan’s hand flies to his cock, palming himself. he reaches out to grab the lube and slicks himself up, never once tearing his away from junmyeon’s movements. he licks his lips as junmyeon hits his sweet spot with a flick of his wrist and hunches forward slightly. “how much longer,” he forces out, voice husky, “until you’re ready for me?”

a small, breathless noise leaves the younger as he brushes his prostate once more, eyes fluttering shut. “right, now, fan. i’m ready for you right now.” feeling the hot coil in his abdomen reach near capacity, he releases his cock, nearly crying out against his will. junmyeon extends his now free hand towards yifan.

the giant climbs on top of him messily, nearly bowling junmyeon’s upper body off the bed. yifan’s kisses are furious and frantic. his inexperience is obvious through the pure sloppiness of them, clacking teeth and wriggling tongues. yifan’s forearms frame junmyeon’s face, fingers stroking his hair, now damp and sweaty. “junmyeon,” he whispers, so soft that his words almost go unheard, “i love you. i love you so much.”

“i love you too,” junmyeon says quietly. he sits up, the motion forcing yifan to move with him. “i love you, yifan.” he lifts himself slightly on his knees, hand sliding behind him to rub yifan’s cock against the cleft of his ass. the flesh jumps against his touch, and yifan himself doesn’t seem to be too receptive to the teasing. he moans into junmyeon’s shoulder, only stopping once junmyeon gently eases the head of his cock inside of him.

yifan’s head lolls backward, exhaling as he’s further guided within junmyeon. his large hands encircle the expanse of his waist. pupils dilated, he keens as junmyeon starts moving. “fuck,” yifan gasps. his hips cant upwards, trying desperately to match junmyeon’s steady, quick rhythm.

it really _has_ been a long time. junmyeon keeps one hand near the base of yifan’s length, just in case it slips out in the midst of his rapid bouncing. his own member is trapped between their stomachs, jolting with each movement and stimulated by friction from both sides/ the stinging in his lower back is familiar and not unpleasant, but he knows sex has felt better before. eventually, his hips stutter. he shouldn’t feel fatigued, but his movement is repetitive and not as pleasurable as it could be. he’s definitely out of shape.

yifan, on the other hand, seems to be having the time of his life. “don’t stop,” he slurs, before flipping him backwards, hips snapping forward as he did so. he bends forward and hooks junmyeon’s legs over his shoulders. it isn’t as though he has any finesse either –– yifan gets lucky that the position he’s maneuvered them into has him thrusting directly into junmyeon’s prostate. both of them see stars.

the shift has them both gasping –– junmyeon at the sharp feeling of _fuck yes_ that races past his spine, yifan at junmyeon’s walls clenching around him at the pleasure. junmyeon catches yifan’s face between his hands, thumbs stroking his cheekbones in time with each thrust. high-pitched huffs leave junmyeon’s mouth, back arching as the head of yifan’s cock shoves just right inside of him. “don’t stop,” he manages, and yifan lowers his head so their foreheads touch.

the gesture is alarmingly intimate, junmyeon notes fearfully. yifan moves the slight distance between them and presses their lips together. it’s softer than before. subdued, restrained. innocent. _loving_. junmyeon’s heart clenches and bile nearly rises up his throat. god, how could he forget? it feels so right, but he knows in his core what he’s doing is wrong. the thought, however, comes dangerously close to slipping out of his head as yifan’s hips jerk hypnotically against him.warmth blooms in his face and chest and quickly goes south as his muscles tense in preparation for release. “yifan, i’m ––” he yelps at a particularly hard shove, and throws his arms around yifan’s neck. “i’m so close…”

“me too,” yifan grits out, and has the good grace not to collapse on top of junmyeon as he comes soon after, hips coming to a stop as he spills himself inside of junmyeon. all of the tension seems to seep out of his body and he sags into junmyeon, requiring a good shove to move off to the side. yifan takes significantly longer to catch his breath. arm thrown over his face, he remains panting as junmyeon rolls onto his side and runs his finger along yifan’s collarbone.

“you held on pretty long for a virgin,” junmyeon comments with a chuckle. the sweat on his body is quickly made cool by the sea breeze that sweeps in through the window, though he doesn’t mind the slight discomfort. there are other things that feel _off_. that’s twice now that he’s forced himself not to come. “i’m impressed.”

“i had to change my pleasure setting four times,” yifan quips. he glances downward, and his mouth edges toward a frown. “you’re not…”

“hm? oh, it’s fine, fan. i don’t need to ––”

yifan’s hand reaches out to touch his still-hard member, forming a circle with his thumb and forefinger. junmyeon hisses at the contact –– not necessarily out of his displeasure –– and involuntarily bucks upward into the heat. “let me take care of you now,” yifan murmurs. he starts slow, almost torturous, but builds a steady pace that has junmyeon coming into his hand within minutes. “there. all better.”

junmyeon momentarily forgets not to kiss him back as yifan smiles at him and pecks his lips. the thought slips even in his post-coital haze: _god, i’m disgusting_. he’s still loose-limbed from his orgasm, splayed across yifan like some sort of cephalopod. no –– this is not the time to relax. he has to set the record straight. he built his life around being assertive.

( ha. that was laughable. )

he sits up abruptly, startling yifan, who had just begun to doze off. “i didn’t come to cheongug to have sex,” he blurts, very eloquently. he regrets the direction his words took immediately. “this was.. definitely _not_ what i had in mind.”

“okay,” says yifan slowly. “neither did i.” he smiles uneasily, brows furrowing in that adorable way they always did when he was confused. yifan really hadn’t changed after all those years. it made everything seem even more like a dream. like the yifan whose fingers were running along the curve of his back so gently wasn’t real.

“no, that’s not what i meant to say,” junmyeon says, shaking his head. he collects himself, gathers the words he needs. “i didn’t come to cheongug for any sort of … interaction. i… i just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. it really is like it was back then, isn’t it, yifan? it looks just like those old documentaries we used to watch late at night. to think were just almost a century short of really living it ourselves.”

the smile vanishes from yifan’s face. “i don’t… i don’t get it. what do you mean, exactly?”

as if that’ll comfort him, junmyeon takes yifan’s hands. his own look ridiculously small, like a kid against yifan’s gigantic mitts. but he’s being the bigger man here. or so he’d like to think. “i didn’t come to cheongug to meet anybody, let alone fall back in love. i just wanted to observe, to test it out –– until i found out that i kind of liked it here. so i stuck around, came by every week. but i was never going to _do_ anything. nothing i might regret. then you came into the mix.” he brings a hand up to his mouth and kisses it. “you, wu yifan, have always been totally fucking inconvenient.”

“i’m… i’m sorry?”

“no, don’t be. it was my fault for letting myself get back here, especially when i’m not staying.”

at once, realization seems to dawn on yifan’s face. but he’s not quite on the mark. “is this about your fiancé? i have one, too. his name is chanyeol, and he won’t mind it if we’re together.” yifan seems to recognize the confusion and denial on his face. he sits up abruptly, suddenly too close. “you said you love me, junmyeon. did you expect me to forget so easily? those words _mean_ something to me junmyeon. _especially_ coming from you.”

 _fuck_ , this was _not_ going his way. “yifan, i _do_ love you. so much. i mean every one of those words. but i just… _can’t_ be with you. i’ll admit –– i fudged the truth a little when i said i have a fiancé. i don’t. i have a husband. and he’s not the only reason i won’t stay in cheongug. but he’s a really big part of it. i’m really sorry if what just happened tonight gave you the impression that this was the start of something. i shouldn’t have let it get this far, but stringing you along even further wouldn’t be fair to you, and i won’t do it.” he swallows, a lump in his throat forming at the utterly defeated look that spreads across yifan’s face. _i put that there_. “i… i hope that we can still be friends.”

yifan averts his gaze briefly. his hands form fists that might’ve gripped junmyeon’s comparatively small fingers too tightly in the real world. all the fight, which had made his frame tense and rigid, seeps out of his shoulders and he flops unceremoniously back down, skull cracking loudly against the headboard. he rolls onto his side so that his back faces junmyeon.

junmyeon sighs softly, sliding so that he can lie on the other pillow. he tries to tug some of the blanket to cover himself, but yifan has a death grip on the fabric.

just as he thinks yifan’s fallen asleep, yifan whispers hoarsely, as if he’d been crying, “i guess we can.”

junmyeon doesn’t turn, but after extending his hand across the sheets, feels his cheeks warm as yifan slips it into his own.

…

kim junmyeon met zhang yixing about two years after he packed his bags and left home.

he had been sitting there, just enjoying his coffee –– as one does at a coffee shop –– when the younger man pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him.

“i’m yixing,” he had said. “do you like watching people too?”

junmyeon did not have any idea how to respond.

yixing blinked, before giving a startled shake of his head. “wait, that’s not what i meant,” a chuckle accompanied his words, and something in the back of junmyeon’s head said that the accompanying dimples were very adorable. “you just.. weren’t doing anything, so i thought you liked people-watching, like me.”

“no,” junmyeon responded as soon as he found his voice. his mother’s reprimand about speaking to strangers echoed in his head. surely, any person in their right mind would run away from the random individual starting a conversation with them about watching people. junmyeon didn’t budge. “just daydreaming. you’re a people-watcher? let me guess –– artist. favorite medium is pencil on paper.”

he wasn’t sure what convinced him to further the discussion. perhaps he had grown sick of being by himself, and he was trying to find companionship any way he could. it was a little sad, but so was everything else about his circumstance at the time. making one little friend couldn’t hurt.

yixing laughed again. it was the nicest sound junmyeon had ever heard since he came to changsha. “you’re kind of right. i’m a songwriter, so i guess you could also say i’m a poet. the best kind of literature is the kind that emulates life the best. so i people-watch.” he paused, looking thoughtful. “does that also make me a stalker?”

“only if you followed people home,” junmyeon snorted.

“ah, you got me.” yixing leaned against the table on his elbow, chin resting in his palm. “i didn’t catch your name.”

“because i didn’t say it.” junmyeon offered his hand. “i’m kim junmyeon.”

yixing took his hand gingerly, and kissed the back of it without a hint of irony. “charmed.”

junmyeon wouldn’t say that he fell for him then and there, but he certainly was that –– charmed.

zhang yixing was a breath of fresh air, exactly what junmyeon needed after he fled gwacheon. he had virtually no friends in changsha, clinging onto his job as a korean teacher at the local high school. his mandarin was somewhere trapped between rudimentary and intermediate, and the regional dialect only complicated matters even further. it wasn’t the successful breakaway he had been hoping for, perhaps even farther form it. he’d run off to escape a type of suffering, only to fall into another form of it. it was by some miracle that zhang yixing sat down at his table, and yet another work of god that yixing had convinced his wacky uncle weijia to let junmyeon stay with them after he’d fallen behind on his rent.

they had somehow made the leap from tentative friends to flatmates within a span of six months. and proximity makes the heart grow fonder, as much as distance does.

junmyeon wouldn’t deny there was _some_ sort of physical attraction ignited within him the first time he’d met yixing; the man was undeniably handsome. further conversation revealed him to be a bizarre mixture of off-kilter and well-adjusted, leaving junmyeon envious of yixing’s secure way he wanted to live his life –– but above all else, he felt warmth for the man.

stranger danger be damned.

yixing was almost infuriatingly kind. he was the town’s little celebrity, everyone’s therapist and everyone’s best friend, the walking, talking ear. it was almost like hypnosis, how easily he got people to spill their deepest, darkest secrets. there was even a certain degree of mindless self-sacrifice in his irrational desire to fix the world’s problems, of which both junmyeon and weijia had to work frantically to curb. yixing’s restraint was sort of like a unicorn. theoretically beautiful and very nonexistent. he’d always had this unbearable urge to help anyone and everyone around him.

to junmyeon’s immense surprise and relief, however, yixing had only pried once into his past.

“why’d you leave korea?” he had asked. he and junmyeon were lying on his bed, staring at the blank, white ceiling above them. “why did you leave it behind?”

junmyeon had pursed his lips, trying to figure out his response. there were so many reasons he’d left everything behind –– his mother, seokjin, his students. so many ways to explain it, so many ways to phrase it. he spoke just as yixing had begun to retract his question, shrugging. “it just wasn’t my style.”

( if he closed his eyes, he could still recall the date of his mother’s wedding, the worst day of his life. already unbearable considering who was involved, junmyeon had been dreading the date the very moment it was announced. it had been foolish of him to try and take a little piece of happiness for himself, a way to one-up spencer and his words.

there were so many things that made him snap so publicly. one of them had been yifan’s unexpected presence. junmyeon was sick and tired of the constant of disparagement, and something in his self-righteous brain saw fit to say something. it didn’t go well.

the arrogant twist of yifan’s handsome features. his hair had been silver, for his group’s christmas album, and had fit in beautifully with the winter wedding –– even if it was _february_.

he could recall spencer’s ensuing guffaw, seokjin’s annoyed snarl, his mother’s voice murmuring condolences as her gloved hand reached out and touched his shoulder.

he could recall the tears that had slipped so easily from his eyes as he spun on his heel, the cries and shouts to come back, his twin brother yelling his name.

yifan’s silence. )

yixing didn’t ask what he meant, only threaded his fingers through junmyeon’s, and whispered, “okay.”

maybe yixing had sensed his hurt through those three little words, known that _something_ was off, and junmyeon needed a little repairing. his age-addled brain now doesn’t remember who kissed who first, but there was indeed kissing involved. kissing that led to heavy petting, then quick and clandestine handjobs, and culminated to a night (a full eight hours) of sweet, sweet love-making while weijia was out of town.

it was so _natural_. it made sense that yixing and junmyeon felt something towards one another and the tension of cohabitation would lead to an eruption of passion and, eventually, love.

zhang yixing was the first person to make kim junmyeon feel like he belonged somewhere. junmyeon and seokjin had basically been obligated to be attached at the hip, but it had been remarkably easy to leave his brother’s side. conversely, he found himself longing for yixing whenever he went to go out people-watching, and jealousy clenched his heart at the thought that yixing might be picking someone up with the same line he’d used on junmyeon.

the one thing junmyeon does remember, though, is that yixing was the one to say “i love you” first. he could remember the swell of relief and joy within him as clear as day, the immense sense of happiness that zhang yixing loved him –– yes, him, _kim junmyeon_ , dorky, clumsy, unfunny junmyeon. yixing loved him, and junmyeon loved him back. he’d told him as much, through his blubbering. they _loved_ each other.

the feeling was new and shocking and welcome in equal measure. junmyeon knew then that was where he was supposed to be. it had taken him over twenty years of being lost and befuddled, but changsha and yixing were always waiting for him. he’d never felt more content and safe in his life than he did when yixing first told him he loved him. the sensation was addictive and just oh so _right_. like everything had fallen into place.

naturally, the next step would be marriage and starting a family.

undeniably, junmyeon was terrified. he’d had enough weddings for a lifetime, but the ceremony was something very important to yixing, who was both partial and impartial to tradition. he could suck it up. walk down the aisle arm and arm with weijia and kiss yixing. sit through a two hour banquet featuring yixing’s expansive family (and none of his own) with their strange dance moves, the complete antithesis of yixing’s flawless grace. one little sacrifice for his beloved. after all, that’s what love was, wasn’t it? giving a little and taking a little to make the one you loved happy.

going through it was kind of like ripping off a band-aid. it didn’t _really_ hurt, and even if it did, it was only for a split second. in fact, junmyeon loved every bit of it. yixing’s pretty cousin lu han’s best man speech brought him to tears of laughter, and his little nephew shixun had been the cutest ring bearer junmyeon had ever seen in his life. weijia had cooed at him and then promptly switched to nearly bawling his eyes out before they walked down the aisle, and the whole affair had ended up the complete opposite of the disaster junmyeon attended four years ago.

( there was a sense of home, he would later realize. he felt like a stranger, an outsider at his mother’s wedding, but at his own, junmyeon felt wanted. people liked him, and they wanted to be there. they wanted _him_ to be there. )

his hands had shook as he slipped the ring onto yixing’s finger, but he didn’t drop it like he feared he would. the big kiss was exhilarating, the blood rushing through his ears threatening to drown out the cheers of yixing’s family.

the whole wedding business really wasn’t so bad.

( even if he did think of wu yifan more than once throughout the ceremony. )

having kids, though, was a whole other ballpark.

at least yixing was very good at teaching others how to play baseball.

the amount of uncertainty and anxiety and apprehension junmyeon felt at being a father could only be defined in units of metric fucktons. he would be the first to declare his mother had done all right by him, but mr. wu alone wasn’t a good enough base to built his paternal code off of, and junmyeon sure as hell wasn’t going to take any cues from spencer. what if he fucked up? he _couldn’t_ fuck up –– this was a kid, a living, breathing creature he would have to teach and mold and raise and if he fucked up, he could ruin a _life_.

yixing had seen and acknowledged junmyeon’s concerns and backed off on the idea. he wouldn’t force junmyeon into a lifetime commitment he didn’t want, and junmyeon respected him for that.

however, junmyeon had also seen the way yixing interacted with the kids in his town. with such tender longing he tried (but failed) to conceal. he wanted kids _so_ badly, children of his own, and who was junmyeon to hold him back from that? yixing gave so much of himself to make others happy. he deserved to have something that made him happy too.

after a few mental pep talks and crumpled pro/con lists tossed into the wastebin, junmyeon came up behind yixing, wrapped his arms around his husband’s waist, and asked how he felt about having a little boy.

yixing’s ensuing two-hundred watt smile was just enough to negate the icy chill that raced down junmyeon’s neck as he asked.

approximately nine months later, junmyeon met little zitao for the first time.

the baby had been so small, with naturally baggy eyes and thin lips. so tiny, so fragile. and he was _junmyeon’s_. oh, of course, zitao was yixing’s son as well –– “i think this was the plot of an old movie i saw one,” yixing had chuckled as they sent their dna in –– but the small, soft, near-incredulous thought of _mine_ had been engraved into junmyeon’s mind the moment he laid eyes on the infant.

zitao was not an easy baby to raise. finicky and picky, it seemed the only thing the boy liked was hitting random objects –– that is, until he discovered leopard print was a thing. zitao was hilariously cowardly, though one could probably relate that to junmyeon’s faulty genes at work, and he had a horrendous temper that was only matched by his yixing-given good will. it blended almost into a sense of righteousness, an exasperating need to fix everyone’s problems, usually through punching. still, it meant he was a good kid. and junmyeon loved that about his son the most. the little boy he and yixing raised was, if nothing else, a good person.

in the blink of an eye, eighteen years went by and zitao moved out of the house. he’d opened his own martial arts studio, teaching kids and adults alike self-defense. though junmyeon was slightly disapproving of the fact zitao decided to bypass university and get a job straight away, opening a place on his _own_ , before reaching twenty-one, was still an accomplishment worth of praise. zitao was a popular enough kid, generally well-liked. he wasn’t making millions, but he certainly wasn’t struggling either. it was quite the difference from the little boy who couldn’t even bear to kill a cockroach on his own.

funnily enough, for all his pride, there were still things junmyeon didn’t know about his son. junmyeon didn’t even know zitao had a high school sweetheart until he’d come home at the age of twenty-six, asking his fathers for advice on how he should propose to her. it was then, really, that he’d realized his boy was all grown up. upon which he’d promptly started blubbering, and zitao rolled his eyes and turned to yixing.

junmyeon blinked again, and all of a sudden, zitao was thirty-two and passing a baby girl into his arms. “this is yifei, appa,” zitao had said, seemingly unaware of how junmyeon’s heart nearly stopped at the first syllable of her name. “my _daughter_.” zitao sounded so proud. junmyeon felt even prouder. his _family_ –– it never really hit him until he held his granddaughter for the first time –– was flourishing. he ran away from his flesh and blood decades ago, but now with a husband and son and grandchild, junmyeon felt at peace. he had done _something_ , and he’d done it well.

and then the world came crashing down on junmyeon –– like it always does –– when zitao was thirty-nine.

zitao was a good boy. he had always been a good boy. being a good boy led to him getting into altercations pretty often, though luckily for him, he’d managed to come out unscathed everything single time. unluckily, all it takes is one time to take a man down.

junmyeon wishes he could remember what took his son away from him. but he can’t. he couldn’t even remember the day after he’d gotten the news, and he couldn’t bear to ask. all he could be certain of was the fact that zitao had died doing a good thing. other than that, junmyeon had gone numb. his pride and joy was gone. his granddaughter without a father. what else could he have felt, besides nothingness?

in some sort of cosmic joke, cheongug came out of beta-testing and was officially being marketed to the population a year later. back in changsha, it would’ve been called tienndaan, but he and yixing were living in seoul by then. too many memories of zitao resided in changsha. and, in any case, the only person who ever regularly visited them was shixun. when yifei had grown, she went to shanghai to live her own life. no need to bother her little, old grandparents. perhaps they reminded her too much of her father, if she remembered much of him at all.

nevertheless, a breath of fresh air is what junmyeon and yixing needed, so they moved.

junmyeon will never forget the first time he and yixing first saw the advertisement for cheongug. they had been walking hand in hand after shopping for groceries –– and junmyeon will also never forget how nicely their fingers fit together –– when it had come on the screen of some televisions as they passed by an electronics store.

it had been the first time junmyeon had heard yixing curse beyond the context of their bedroom.

“what utter horseshit,” yixing had scoffed, startling junmyeon, who wasn’t expecting such bitterness and acidity. it wasn’t real anger, or derision. junmyeon knew him too well to think that.

longing was a better word. melancholy. that feeling of loss one gets when buying something for full price only for it to go on sale a week later, magnified tenfold. if only cheongug had launched a year earlier. maybe they could’ve seen zitao again in tienndaan. but, no. it was too late.

“i wouldn’t,” yixing whispered, still agitated even when they got home, “upload my brain there when i died. sure, it sounds like a dream. being young. maybe i could dance again. maybe.” he sighed, a wheeze from leftover pneumonia painting the noise. “but what would be the point in living forever? i would never see our taozi again.”

junmyeon had squeezed his hand, then bent his head to kiss the wrinkled flesh. “i wouldn’t either. there’s no reason to live without you. i can promise you that.”

yixing had smiled, and leaned over to press his lips against junmyeon’s. chaste, sweet. still in love. it’s almost unbelievable. they’ve endured so much. there’s not much left to sit through, and junmyeon’s okay with that. he can’t wait for it to be over. it there was a world, a life after death, that wasn’t cheongug, they certainly would see zitao there.

after forty-nine years of marriage, zhang yixing passed away in his sleep, leaving his old frail husband all alone.

with nothing left to do in his solitude, junmyeon let his curiosity get the better of him.

it wasn’t as if he _needed_ to go to cheongug. he was just lonely, and there was nothing to do at home by himself. junmyeon had tried it for the novelty, and was amazed by how far technology had come. suitably impressed, he’d returned to explore more. it turned out to be pretty fun, watching the people and the world change over time. so junmyeon had come again and again, until it was a regular occurrence. a favorite pastime.

but he still had a promise to keep.

he couldn’t stay in cheongug. no matter what.

…

to his dismay, and admitted surprise, it seems yifan didn’t actually mean it when he said he wanted to be friends too. junmyeon should’ve expected as much. it would’ve been nice to allow himself to be naïve, though, even if only for a little bit. the sex was… better than expected, but he still owed yifan a better explanation for what had occurred between them and why junmyeon decided to put a stop to something that hadn’t and shouldn’t have even really started.

yifan had waited years for him, only to get turned down. and rather brutally, he laments in hindsight. though there will always be a part of junmyeon that resents him for what happened at his mother’s wedding, he can admit that even yifan didn’t deserve that kind of heartbreak.

it was out of the goodness of his heart that he wanted to see yifan again.

thus, his plan for the next five hours was to sit down and have a long talk with yifan about their lives after the incident even if he was more than satisfied with the life he lived with yixing, junmyeon wasn’t exempt from the occasional curiosity and straying thought. sometimes, for instance, when he was bathing zitao in a little plastic turquoise tub, he’d wondered if yifan had kids of his own, if he’d waited as long as junmyeon had.

above all, though, yifan needed to be there for junmyeon to talk to him. and he wasn’t.

junmyeon waited a good five weeks of silence before asking around to find if yifan had been there and left.

people had seen him at the party before, apparently, and said that he always rolled in with folks from the black pearl. junmyeon had never heard of the place, but given the snickering once-overs people gave him when he asked, it likely wasn’t a very _reputable_ location.

“they’d eat you alive there,” someone even went as far to say.

junmyeon has no doubt that they were probably right.

but he puts aside his apprehension and hops in a cab to go to the black pearl, electing not to use the travel time as part of his five hours. he, apparently, _loves_ putting himself in uncomfortable positions. by the time they’ve arrived, junmyeon sees that the sky, which had been a nice orange-red when he left the house party, was now pitch black. he is left in a grassy field in the middle of nowhere. the only sign of civilization is a seemingly decrepit warehouse –– abandoned were it not for the lights and loud music pouring out of it in rhythmic pulses.

that has to be the black pearl.

by the time junmyeon enters it, he finds immediately that the other partygoers were absolutely correct about his presumed disposition towards the black pearl. the place was probably the exact opposite of junmyeon’s cup of tea.

far beyond the varying states of casual-social-gathering attire he had just left, basically everyone in the black pearl was nearly naked. clad in leather and different tassels, along with other garments he didn’t dare fathom, junmyeon couldn’t help but shrink back from the warehouse’s inhabitants. he didn’t appreciate people looking at him as though he were a piece of meat.

this can’t be it; yifan, _virgin yifan_ , spent his free time hanging out in some sort of sex dungeon? the thought of the black pearl itself was already somewhat too much for junmyeon to wrap his head around. people had needs, of course, and so long as no one was hurt, he wouldn’t judge. but to think the wu yifan he’d slept with just over a month ago was a frequenter… maybe he’d lied. maybe he wasn’t a virgin. yifan was, after all, a pretty okay actor.

but then, what reason would he have to lie to junmyeon?

he shakes the thought from his head and moves forward, dodging people who had begun to circle him like vultures. yifan would _not_ be difficult to spot in a crowd, given his impressive height. junmyeon cranes his head, hoping to see a shock of platinum blond throughout the masses of sweaty, dry-humping bodies. he finds nothing.

he won’t allow himself to give up, though. stumbling forward, he walks around on his tiptoes. it’s hard to see over dozens of people strutting around in platform heels. disappointingly, his search is yet again fruitless.

god, wouldn’t it just suck if yifan had left to go to the house party after junmyeon arrived? he’d caught a glimpse of a jeep that looked very much like yifan’s driving away when stepping out of the cab, though that might’ve been his imagination.

he deflates with a sigh and almost crushes someone’s toes with his heels when he stands back flat on his feet. he’s about to turn in for the week until he spots a vaguely familiar face at the bar. it belongs to a person he probably shouldn’t approach. it wouldn’t go over well. _ah, what the hell _? he thinks, with his usual brand of abandon. _one more try couldn’t hurt_. __

“jessica!” junmyeon shouts as loud as he can. the speakers here are significantly better than those at the house party, and he has to cup his hands around his mouth whilst also making his way over to her. “jessica!”

she doesn’t react until he wedges in between her and the extremely inebriated man to her right, who falls off his stool the second junmyeon so much as touches him. the most jessica does does is throw him an annoyed glance before downing her shot. she seems to be as drunk as the man who was next to her. junmyeon prays for a brief moment of clarity. “oh. it’s _you_.”

junmyeon winces. “um, yeah. how’ve you been?”

she rolls her eyes. “you don’t really want me to answer that question.” she doesn’t shift her full body to face him, but her head remains turned. not a complete dismissal. “what do you want? figured you and your brother’d be off gallivanting together somewhere.” _the spite is strong with this one_ , a voice that sounds yixing mumbles.

“yeah, see the thing is… i don’t know where he is.” he steals the fallen man’s drink and puts it to his lips. ugh, bourbon. “i was wondering if you maybe knew where he was since, i don’t know, you two were friends before he found me again. i asked around and people said he came here a lot.”

the loud, bitter guffaw that leaves jessica’s mouth startles him. “we were _not_ friends. if anything, he was just stringing me along for his own amusement. i mean, i _guess_ i should’ve noticed his heart wasn’t in any of it. more like he was just testing things out. like he didn’t know what he was _really_ doing here. like any of us _do_.

“and he was the biggest bitch-made motherfucker i’ve ever seen in my life. he comes to _the black pearl_ of all places and refuses to be touched or touch anyone. at first i thought he was just playing hard to get, but it turns out he was just a fucking _pussy_.” her eyes narrow as she focuses as best she can through her drunken haze. “what makes you think i would tell you even if i knew where he was?”

junmyeon freezes. he hadn’t considered this maybe it was the yixing beaten into him, considering even not-acquaintances as trustworthy people who would of _course_ drop everything and help. “i… i don’t…”

jessica snatches the tumbler from his hand and downs it in one go. “oh, relax, stepbrother. i’m not _that_ much of a bitch.” she exhales loudly through her nose. “i haven’t seen him in this time for a while. i heard he was popping around the nineties and two-thousands. you know yifan. such a head turner, everyone needs to start talking about the tall hot guy that just showed up.”

“thanks,” junmyeon murmurs. he turns to leave, but is pinned down by the weight of jessica’s stare.

“you’re not _just_ his stepbrother, are you?” junmyeon thinks she might’ve scoffed or snorted at his silence, but it’s drowned by the booming bass. “i guessed as much. the way his face lit up when he saw you among all those people. sure, maybe he would’ve been just as happy to get rid of me with anyone else. but it was _you_. if he didn’t introduce you as his stepbrother, i would’ve thought you were the person he was looking for.

“but now… maybe i was right. you are someone special to him, aren’t you?” she splutters out a laugh when junmyeon tries to stutter a response. “you don’t have to look so scared, stepbrother. i won’t remember this conversation anyway.”

not wanting further baseless (not really) accusations, junmyeon blurts another thank you and spins on his heel, sprinting out of the building. he cuts his five hours short and refuses to believe his cheeks are warm, that his heart is pounding –– and all because of wu yifan. again.

…

it takes junmyeon four more weeks to find yifan, and he almost wasn’t sure if he was going to make it to see him again. he even gave the unflappable kyungsoo a scare, and was nearly forbidden from entering cheongug because of it.

but because the universe is _sometimes_ on his side, he gets lucky.

junmyeon always thought that yifan’s proportions weren’t the best for dancing. absolutely amazing for basketball, possibly, but he was just too big to make anything look good. then again, junmyeon never actually did get to see any of yifan’s music shows, so he really didn’t have anything to base his ability on besides conjecture.

lo and behold, yifan is trouncing some poor soul at dance dance revolution in the year 2002.

his brows are scrunched together as his eyes bore holes into the screen, lips pursed in a physical manifestation of his concentration. he actually doesn’t look too bad, and is apparently raking in the highest score on the machine. it’s an endearing sight. junmyeon’s learning something new about yifan.

he waits patiently for the song to finish before approaching him. yifan’s opponent careens off somewhere, flustered at having lost that badly. yifan wipes the sweat on his brown with his sleeve. he’s the epitome of early 2000s bad boy –– black bandana tied around his forehead, clad in monochrome and baggy pants. a fashionista no matter what era he’s in. he doesn’t notice junmyeon until he turns a full ninety degrees to the left, and jumps in surprise when he does. “jesus fuck, junmyeon,” yifan blurts. “you scared me.”

“sorry.” junmyeon reaches over and places a hand on yifan’s arm. “can we talk?”

yifan swings impressively over one of the handrails with his long legs. the movement dislodges junmyeon’s hand, and yifan takes three large strides away. “not really, no. i don’t wanna.”

junmyeon recoils. “you… ‘ _don’t wanna_?’” it’s as childish a reason one can come up with. “yifan, i thought you said ––”

“i know what i said, myeon. i just changed my mind. i don’t think it’d work out, this whole friendship thing; it’s not my style. sorry.” and with that, he walks over to the machine furthest from him.

junmyeon can feel the blood start to boil in his veins. it’s another repeat of that goddamn wedding, of yifan brushing him off like he was nothing –– how fucking _dare_ he do that to him all over again? well, it looks like all that ‘i love you, junmyeon. i’ve always loved you’ stuff was pure bullshit, and now he’s gone and fallen for it all over again. rejection always hurts, but it stings twice as hard when it’s yifan.

he refuses to believe that it’s tears blurring his vision as he stumbles out of the party. it’s all anger and rage and fury –– it _has_ to be. because he won’t let himself get hurt by yifan again. how _stupid_ was he? to fool himself into thinking that yifan _did_ return his feelings after all those years, like he didn’t break his heart and humiliate him in front of over a hundred people. yifan had to have known those three words would hurt him the most. yixing was right. cheongug was just a bunch of horseshit and he should’ve never given it a chance ––

a large paw grabs his arm just as he’s about to hail a cab. junmyeon moves to shake it loose, but the grip only tightens. “let go of me, _yifan_.”

one sharp tug has him falling back against yifan’s frame, locked in his arms. “myeon,” yifan rumbles, and the depth of his tone, so different from his earlier dismissiveness, has junmyeon looking up to glare at him. yifan’s face is pinched, lower lip jutting out in an almost laughable, yet strangely sincere pout. there’s a furrow between his brows that looks as deep as the marianas trench. “look, i… i’m sorry. i didn’t want to be such a dick, but, fuck, i…”

he scrubs a hand over his face. “i wanted to be friends. really. but i just kept thinking and thinking about it, and the more i thought about it, the more it started to hurt. i loved you for _decades_ , junmyeon, and i had you, right there, telling me you loved me too. and then, in the same breath, you took that away from me. i was _aching_ , junmyeon, knowing that you were out that and that you did and didn’t want me. it was hurtful and confusing, and i didn’t know what to do.

“i didn’t want to face you again. i didn’t want to reopen old wounds. so i ran, like a coward, and i hurt you. i’m sorry.” he lets go of junmyeon’s wrist. “what i did wasn’t fair to you.”

junmyeon rubs his wrist gingerly, mostly out of habit; it doesn’t actually hurt. he can see where yifan’s coming from, he supposes. it doesn’t mean he has to like it. but he’s never been one to be particularly spiteful, either –– at least, after he grew into adulthood. “… apology accepted, i guess.”

yifan puts his hands on his hips, looking almost like a stern father were it not for the uneasy expression on his face. and his attire. that, too. “you said you wanted to talk…?”

he did, though he’s not sure if he still wants to. after all, his pride is still hurt from the words yifan threw at him. this whole thing with yifan was a mess of hasty decisions without any forethought, and it probably wasn’t in his best interest to prolong contact. he catches himself mirroring yifan’s lip bite of uncertainty, and decides, _oh, what the hell_. “not here.”

he ends up dragging yifan to an empty rooftop, hoping nobody has his bright idea to come up and also have a deep, heartfelt conversation with their first love. a part of him snarks that an abandoned roof with no parapet to prevent accidental slippage seems an awful lot like a place one chooses to commit murder. but that’s nonsense –– people can’t die in cheongug. so yifan’s totally safe.

“secluded enough?” yifan asks finally. his hands are shoved deep in his pockets and he scuffs his feet. “i really hope you’re not gonna push me off this thing. i forgot what my pain settings are and it kind of feels rude just to change them right in front of you.”

despite the circumstances, junmyeon still chuckles, appreciative of the fact yifan is trying to lighten the mood. the conversation will be awkward regardless, given the subject matter, but there _was_ a point in his life where he and yifan could joke around each other comfortably. it’d be nice to go back to that. “i was thinking about it. but i _did_ , in fact, bring you up here to talk. i wanted to explain my reason for wanting to be just friends, given what happened… that night.”

“shoot.”

he takes a deep breath. it’s so strange, having to be careful of what he wanted to say. he hasn’t censored himself in a long time, but yifan’s feelings mean something to him. hurting him further was the last thing on his to-do list. yifan had never been the type to jump to conclusions, though a lot could have change in the time they’d been apart. he could only hope nothing had.

“i’m dying,” junmyeon says flatly. best to just lay it all out there. “of cancer. the doctors keep telling me i have months to live, but i keep surpassing their expectations, so it’s safe to say i’m running on borrowed time. that’s… that’s why i wanted to stay friends. i never intended to form a permanent connection. i didn’t want to disappear on anyone.”

it’s a little alarming to hear his death sentence said aloud with his own voice. he’s heard it long enough that it should be fact; it’s his own admission that’s startling. he knew that death was inevitability –– every significant event in his life for the past ten years aside from his diagnosis has been a death. the world was never sick of reminding him.

his words aren’t the whole truth, but they should be enough for yifan to understand.

well, there. he’s said his piece, shorter than he expected.

yifan looks a little dumbstruck, clearly not expecting junmyeon to get into the meat of things so quickly, yes, he probably could’ve tried to open the conversation with something more light-hearted, something to further ease the tension. however, he’d just laid all of his cards on the table instead. was it better this way? that was debatable. yifan would appreciate him not beating around the bush. but the bush was rather top-heavy, so he might’ve also appreciated a heads up. nevertheless, the flabbergasted silence is slightly concerning, so junmyeon extends a cautious hand.

“yifan?” he says softly. he takes a tentative step forward. “are you okay…?”

the other man’s jarring splutter makes him jump. it certainly was not the noise he expected to come out of his mouth, and his incredulity only worsens at the following words falling from yifan’s lips. “ _that’s it_?”

“...what do you mean ‘that’s it?’ that is my reason and it is perfectly valid ––”

“newsflash, junmyeon –– everyone’s dying. _i’m_ dying. people don’t get to live forever unless they’re _here_. permanently. we’re not yet, so what’s the point of worrying? just imagine, junmyeon, if you live for another six, seven years? that’s over fifteen hundred hours we’d get to spend together. two months worth of a relationship. you said it yourself –– you’ve exceeded your doctors’ expectations every time.” his lips twist into a rueful smile. “you’ve always been kind of a miracle worker, myeon. why would you limit yourself because of one little thing?”

junmyeon frowns. “it’s more complicated than that, yifan ––”

“is it?” yifan takes a step forward into junmyeon’s personal space. “i think you’re scared of something else. you said you had a husband, right? i think you’re afraid of forgetting him. because, that night we spent together, you never mentioned him until after we… we were done. did you forget him that night, junmyeon? did you forget him because of me?” he’s getting too close for comfort –– both literally and metaphorically. yixing had been such an integral part of his life that it was practically eviscerating that he slipped his mind.

“you forgot him… because you love me,” yifan continues. his hands come up to cradle junmyeon’s face gently. his eyes pierce into his skull, looking too melancholy to mean the triumph his words connote. “you’re afraid of loving me because you’re afraid that loving me means you’ll forget him.”

oh, for _fuck’s_ sake. why does he have to be so insistent and insightful and fucking _correct_? since when did wu yifan become a student of aristotle? junmyeon squeezes his eyes shut and turns his face downward, trying his hardest not to cry. bulls-eye. direct hit. one-hit k.o. the throbbing in his chest is proof. yifan’s thumbs swipe at his cheeks, wiping away his tears, as he presses his lips to the top of junmyeon’s head.

it isn’t like loving yifan a year after yixing’s been gone is the problem. it’s loving yifan _specifically_ , after years and years of loving yixing that’s bringing him to tears. it’s a slap to yixing’s face. yixing, the man who picked up the pieces yifan left behind and painstakingly glued junmyeon back together, who taught him what real unconditional love was, who made sure he never wanted for anything.

yet, all wu yifan has to do is hop, skip, and jump straight back into junmyeon’s life and his heart is racing, head spinning, cheeks flushing. and, to top it all off, he threw himself into yifan’s arms the moment he knew he would be welcome there. a whole lifetime together thrown out the window at the notion that his first love had reciprocated his feelings all along. how in the world could that have _ever_ been fair towards yixing, even if he wasn’t around to see any of this mess?

“look at me,” yifan commands softly. he lifts junmyeon’s chin with his hand and strokes his cheek with his thumb. “ _don’t_. don’t feel guilty for something you can’t control.” he leans to kiss a stray tear away and junmyeon bawls. “your husband loved you, didn’t he? i have no doubt you loved him too. if… if your husband loved you, then he would’ve wanted you to be happy, right? do i make you happy, myeon?”

even if he was currently speaking to him like he was a child, by god yifan did. ever since junmyeon was five years old, yifan had made him happy. he made him happy with his smiles and laughs, poor jokes, his kindness and understanding. he made him so happy, and it was remarkably easy to get over that decades-old rough patch. the admission of pining and longing, justifying junmyeon’s heartache, ended it one fell swoop. since yixing had died, junmyeon had never felt as happy as when yifan told him he loved him.

and yifan was looking at him, holding him, whispering to him with such tenderness and love that even through his guilt and regret, junmyeon felt warm.

yes, wu yifan made him happy, just as much as he made him sad.

“you do,” junmyeon forces out. his fingers cling to the front yifan’s shirt. “you –– you made me happy, and i got scared because… i –– i… i made a promise and i can’t _not_ keep it, but damn it, i still _love_ you and it’s been years and you still make my world go round ––”

yifan shuts him up with a kiss. it’s salty from junmyeon’s tears. “then let me make you happy, junmyeon. don’t run from me anymore.”

he doesn’t resist when yifan’s mouth comes crashing onto his, melting instead into the pressure as his arms wind around yifan’s neck. junmyeon knows full well that he _wants_ this, as much as the thought hurts, that it’s not just yifan forcing himself onto an emotionally compromised widower. he’s wanted this for years, and the only thing keeping him away from his first love is a dead man. a dead man who gave him the world and more.

yifan lays him down on the concrete, and all thoughts of begging for forgiveness fly out of his head.

the world never could go and make things easy for him –– not even virtual reality. at this point, he was too tired to fight back.

( yifan’s bare body is like a furnace pressed up beside him. he has one arm curled over junmyeon’s torso, drawing little shapes on his ribcage. the other pillow junmyeon’s head, fingers toying with his hair. they are silent, listening to each other’s breathing and the occasional car passing by below. they don’t have anything else to say.

the slide of fingers across their bodies –– angry red lines scored down the length of yifan’s back and the clumsy, purpling bruises circled around junmyeon’s hips –– speak volumes.

“come see me,” yifan says without warning, so quickly junmyeon almost didn’t even hear him, “in the real world. if your doctors clear you for travel, of course.”

junmyeon tilts his face up, plump, swollen lips looking for another kiss. yifan gives him one. he hopes it’ll distract him but all yifan does after pulling away is give him those irresistible hopeful puppy-eyes. “i don’t think that’s a good idea,” junmyeon demurs. they’ve gone so long without seeing each other, they remember each other only as young men. there’s a part of him that feels terrified of ruining that illusion. obviously, they know that they’re both well out of their prime. but to see it with their own two eyes is something different entirely. yifan had just spent the better part of an hour telling him how beautiful he was. knowing what he _really_ looked like might shatter his perception forever.

“please,” says yifan quietly. “it’s… i…” he takes a deep breath, averting his eyes. “i want you to see me. as how i really am. it’s important to me that you understand that… that _i_ understand.”

junmyeon’s brows furrow, unsure of what he means. yifan jostles him when he sits up, so junmyeon follows. yifan leans fully forward, not quite looking looking at the other.

“i don’t want you to think i was being… selfish, or trying to force myself on you out of some stupid ‘one life, one chance’ mentality. i understand you have your reasons for wanting to stay unattached. i really do. i have my own agenda, i guess you could say, too. i guess the difference between you and me is that i have my own reasons for… moving here pretty soon. for good.”

the expression is common enough to make junmyeon’s breath catch in his throat. “what…?”

yifan turns slowly, taking junmyeon’s hand and pressing it to his lips. “i want you to see me beyond just _this_. cheongug is great, but this _avatar_ is… it’s a lie. false advertisement. i would get it if you didn’t want to come, but i would appreciate it a lot if you did.”

well, then, he couldn’t let him down, could he? junmyeon nods, letting his head fall onto yifan’s shoulder. “tell me where,” he murmurs against the elder’s skin. “i’ll be there.” )

…

kyungsoo agreeing to go with him was _definitely_ not what junmyeon expected. out of his two caretakers, kyungsoo was the more aloof one, seemingly all too aware that one shouldn’t get too attached to their charges in this line of work. people don’t last very long. kyungsoo is one of those people who seem hyper-aware of this, in combination with his natural introversion. his partner baekhyun is the complete opposite, which is why junmyeon was expecting to be accompanied by the clingy, cheerful hospice worker instead of the frowny, stoic one.

he expresses as much in fewer words, and kyungsoo simply shrugs in response. “baekhyun’s on vacation today, something about seeing a show with his wife. taeyeon got the tickets months ago, so it’s not like he could skip out.” he cracks a rare smile. “sap.”

“that’s what happy marriages do to you,” junmyeon agrees. he sits patiently as kyungsoo fusses with his oxygen tank while waiting for the van. he feels more than a tiny bit nervous, but wouldn’t whine about it to the orderly. this little excursion was his idea (yifan’s really, but junmyeon was the one who asked to go in the real world), so he has little right to complain. “you’ll understand someday.”

there’s a clear set dichotomy between his two caretakers. while they’re both pretty blunt and prone to making jokes at the expense of others, kyungsoo is shy where baekhyun is brash. baekhyun is sentimental where kyungsoo is rational. the two function as two sides of the same coin –– perfect amusement for an aging man with too much time on his hands.

satisfied with the arrangement of junmyeon’s accessories, kyungsoo steps off to the side and surveys his work, hands on his hips. “i highly doubt _that_ ,” he snorts.

the van arrives soon after, and junmyeon allows himself to be rolled up the ramp, rattling off the address to the driver.

truth be told, he still can’t even believe the place exists –– _kim seokjin memorial hospital_. apparently, it had been started by seokjin’s fiancé after he passed away in a car crash (the first he’s ever heard of such an event). junmyeon had never had the privilege of meeting the man who captured seokjin’s heart, and he regrets now more than ever not reconciling with his brother. seokjin really didn’t have any fault in the problems that caused junmyeon to run away, but they still lost contact nonetheless. the last time the twins had seen each other was at the wedding and now seokjin was gone. another thing about having too much time on his hands is that the regret starts to creep in.

kyungsoo seems to take note of his uncomfortable reticence, but doesn’t comment on it.

instead, junmyeon trains his eyes on his lap, where his hands are folded. they’re so different than how they look when he’s in cheongug. rather than pale and smooth, his hands are ravaged by age. liver spots splatter the backs of them, and the skin folds with wrinkles. his phalanges are stiff, requiring him to regularly exercise flexing them, lest they become irrevocably immobile. they’re part of the reason he’s still hesitant about meeting yifan again. after he’d spent all that time marveling at junmyeon’s hands, the real deal would almost certainly fall short.

he also doesn’t know much about yifan’s condition –– he just knows that it can’t be good. gwacheon and seoul aren’t far apart at all, but they can’t even meet halfway. junmyeon has to do all the traveling, for reasons yifan declined to specify. although he’d tod junmyeon where he was being cared for, he’d refused to say anything else. all junmyeon was able to do was guess, and his imagination hadn’t been kind to yifan so far. it was shallow of him to care solely about his appearance, but it prevented him from thinking the worst.

the only reason junmyeon realizes they’ve arrived is because kyungsoo accidentally elbows his armrest while unbuckling his seatbelt. peering out the window, junmyeon feels something strange and unpleasant swelling in his chest.

the kim seokjin memorial hospital is huge –– quite possibly even larger than the facility junmyeon had just come from. at the time of his departure, seokjin had just been finishing up medical school. by the time he had come back to korea, seokjin was long gone. but the hospital was proof that his little brother had achieved his dreams. the structure extends at least ten stories, a shining building made of glass and steel beams. the ambulance bay seems constantly busy, with vehicles coming and leaving in equal measure. some patients are being wheeled out and about by their nurses, engaged in pleasant conversation.

kyungsoo takes the handles of his wheelchair and pushes him and his oxygen tank. junmyeon takes the time to further appreciate the interior of the hospital –– washed a light pink, he notes with some fondness –– as kyungsoo explains their arrival to the lady at the front desk.

there are some understandably distraught and worried faces pacing the length of the lobby, but he notices there are also plenty of smiling faces. patients milling about and stretching their legs, or folks getting discharged, or doctors on their coffee break, everything exudes comfort and warmth. a desire to make people healthy and happy. while junmyeon’s hospice is by no means a vortex of pain and prolonged suffering, he can definitely appreciate the atmosphere of care and support the hospital generates.

he looks up as kyungsoo places a hand on his shoulder, finding an extraordinarily tall young man who smiles cheerfully down at him.

“junmyeon-ssi,” kyungsoo says, extending his hand, “this is ––”

“park chanyeol,” the young man interrupts, the walking definition of chipper. kyungsoo makes a quiet noise of displeasure low in his throat. “i’m yifan-hyung’s caretaker.”

 _and fiancé_. he recognizes the name. junmyeon’s brows rise as he takes in chanyeol’s frame. it certainly looks like they’re proportional, long limbs and all two giant peas in a pod, if junmyeon were to guess. chanyeol’s pretty easy on the eyes, but that doesn’t sound like the only reason yifan would marry him. there’s a sort of relaxation combined with friendliness in chanyeol’s posture, heightened by the infectious smile that seems to have taken permanent residence on his face. over time, though, he can see how it might get a bit unsettling. “it’s very nice to meet you, chanyeol-ssi.”

“likewise.” chanyeol spins on his heel with a large movement of his arm that could also be perceived as a ‘come-hither.’ he leads junmyeon and kyungsoo into a large elevator and pushes the button for the eleventh floor. “i’m sure hyung will be excited to see you. he doesn’t get many visitors anymore, since his fans are all grown up and about as old as he is.” he blinks. “no offense.”

kyungsoo snorts, and junmyeon waves a hand at him. “none taken, chanyeol-ssi. age is just a part of life. people grow to have different priorities.” kyungsoo snorts again.

chanyeol’s grin widens. “very well said.”

the elevator comes to a stop with a little _ding_ , and chanyeol helps maneuver the chair and tank out of the metal box. the eleventh floor is rather different than the lobby. the color scheme seems to be solely sterile white, with the occasional shock of pigmentation from plants within pristine white vases. the linoleum floor is painstakingly shined, his wheels making little squeaks as he’s pushed down the wide corridor.

they come to a stop in front of room number six, which bears two name placards. the bottom one is empty, but the top reads in large, capitalized helvetica: wu yifan. junmyeon’s heart leaps into his throat in anticipation, fingers twitching in want of something to do. kyungsoo’s hand is a welcome and comforting weight on his shoulder.

chanyeol unlocks the door and steps inside with a cheery, “ _hyung_ , i’m _home_.”

what he gets in response is nothing but a series of monotonous beeps.

kyungsoo carefully rolls junmyeon over the metal doorframe and brings him to a stop right at the foot of yifan’s bed. junmyeon tries not to let his surprise show on his face, but it’s probably still there.

yifan’s just lying there, in an achromatic hospital bed. he has his hands folded in his lap as he reclines on a fluffy, white pillow, eyes shut. there are a series of tubes and wires connected to him –– a heart monitor attached to his finger, nodes plastered onto his forehead recording what junmyeon presumes to be brain activity, a trach tube taped to his throat. yifan is so unmoving that he’s almost deathlike. it’s terrifying to see him like this, especially knowing how agile he is in cheongug.

junmyeon gets to his feet shakily, taking minute steps towards yifan. kyungsoo moves quickly to link arms with him and brings him to yifan’s side. junmyeon swallows back a sob as he reaches out and takes yifan’s still hand, a movement that sparks a jolted peak in one of the older man’s readouts.

“he still responds to stimuli,” chanyeol explains as he moves to yifan’s other side to stand next to all the machinery. “but he can’t react physically. he knows that we’re here, but can’t speak, or open his eyes to see us. all he can do is hear and feel us touching him.”

“i… i see.” _i understand_ , yifan had said. and junmyeon had doubted him. he looks up at chanyeol, who is suddenly blurry. likely a result of the moisture in his eyes. “may we… have a few moments alone?”

“of course,” chanyeol says. squeezing his arm gently in sympathy, kyungsoo follows the other out.

with only yifan and himself, the room is infinitely bigger, and twice as empty. sunlight streams in from the windows, blinds pulled off to the side. junmyeon leans over to examine yifan better. part of him feels self-conscious about the deep scrutiny, especially because yifan is more than likely aware how close he was. but it’s been fifty years. can one blame him for wanting to see what’s changed?

obviously, he’s older. though the last time junmyeon saw yifan in the flesh he’d had silver hair, the follicles atop current yifan’s head are pure white as a result of age, also speckling his brows and lashes. the skin of his face and neck sags, age-typical wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, as well as around the hole from his trach tube. his jowls are especially evident through the loose skin. he looks like a bulldog. junmyeon supposes they also kind of match, noting with some humor that their arms are quite similar. yifan’s fingers are longer and a bit thicker and as junmyeon takes his hand, he regards the stiffness of the appendages. his chest rises and falls steadily, but there’s no puffs of air from his nose or mouth. junmyeon bends down with some difficulty to kiss yifan’s leathery cheek. the heart monitor squawks but quickly returns to normal. “you understand,” he whispers. “i’m sorry. i love you.”

it takes him a bit of effort for him to straighten back up, and he lowers himself gingerly into his wheelchair. yifan continues to look like a mannequin, absolutely and perfectly still. that’s fine. junmyeon has had plenty of times to conduct one-sided conversations before.

“i’m sorry,” he repeats. “i was selfish. i was humiliated, and my first response was to run from my problems. in doing so, i disappointed so many people. eomma, seokjin, you.” he bows his head, letting tears fall onto his clenched fists. “i didn’t even try to say goodbye.

“i ran off and made a new life for myself and hurt so many people who didn’t deserve it. i’ve been nothing but selfish and now it’s… it’s too late to do anything. we’re the only ones left, aren’t we, yifan? please, if there’s no one else to do so anymore, forgive me for hurting everyone.”

no response. not that he was expecting one.

he sits in what seems to be an eternity of silence, breaking it once he’s tired of it to explain what happened after he ran away from his mother’s wedding –– how he had gone to changsha with little more than the clothes on his back, the difficulty of trying to live in a new place, the struggle to make a living, meeting yixing and falling in love. more than anything, his diatribe to assuage his own guilt. _someone_ deserves to know what happened to him after he vanished.

he had just finished describing his wedding before the door creaks open and chanyeol steps inside with kyungsoo on his heels. “am i tiring him out?” junmyeon asks, attempting a smile. his eyes never leave yifan’s face, which hasn’t so much as twitched since he arrived. he truly can’t move. lively, chaotic yifan is stock-still.

“a little,” chanyeol responds. “it’s very difficult for him to stay lucid for long periods of time. it stresses him out, too. so i think it’s best if we let him sleep now. you can always come back later. gwacheon and seoul are _super_ close, after all.”

junmyeon nods, squeezing yifan’s hand one more time. “that’s true.” he doesn’t want to let him go, but knows that he has to. in a lower voice, he whispers softly, “goodbye, fan.” he promises he’ll be back later.

they don’t end up taking him back to the hospice straight away. the elevator ride is a little awkward, what with chanyeol’s incessant exuberance, kyungsoo’s shifty gaze, and junmyeon’s lingering melancholy. he will forever be glad that he found yifan again, but to see that he’s been reduced to a mere shell of his former self is just as heartbreaking as never seeing him again at all.

chanyeol invites them for some coffee –– “my treat!” –– before they go, and he winds up sitting with junmyeon as kyungsoo goes to rattle off his ridiculously complicated order. it appears that chanyeol isn’t particularly socially conscious around strangers, because all he does is sit there and smile at junmyeon while they wait for their drinks. it’s a little disconcerting, but junmyeon quickly surmises it’s because the young man simply doesn’t know what to say.

junmyeon clears his throat, searching for a way to breach the uncomfortable atmosphere. “so…,” he starts. “yifan told me he was going to marry you.”

chanyeol’s widened eyes set him right on the precipice of ‘manic’ and he chuckles uncertainly. “he did, did he?”

“yes. he did.”

the younger man shifts, clearly a little embarrassed. finally, the veneer of happy hospital worker slips off his face and he starts displaying genuine emotion. junmyeon wonders if his cheeks are sore now that he’s stopped smiling that broadly. “well, it’s… _true_ ,” chanyeol says. “we were actually supposed to get married next week.” he blinks, throwing a curious glance junmyeon’s way. “did yifan-hyung also tell you why he is… the way he is?”

shame colors the senior’s cheeks as he averts his eyes. he toys with the hem of his cardigan absently. “i’m afraid not. he never explained to me what happened. he just… wanted me to come see him.”

chanyeol hums thoughtfully. he briefly thanks kyungsoo when the latter returns with a tray of drinks and takes a sip of his espresso. “i’m assuming you’re well aware of who yifan-hyung was? yeokbeom, the leader of one of the hottest boy bands in recent history?”

so _that_ was his stage name. “i know a little of it, yes.”

“i guess he kind of built up a rep for being really hardworking. i’ve never heard it from his mouth –– for obvious reasons –– but netizens used to say he put in five times as much effort because he wasn’t as talented as the other members. he was charming and had a way with words, but as far as singing, dancing, and rapping, he wasn’t… the best.”

“i think he’s said as much.” out of his periphery, junmyeon sees kyungsoo wave the steam off from his cup, and he parts his lips once kyungsoo raises it to his mouth.

”his work ethic kind of caught up to him,” chanyeol continues. “some five years after his group debuted, he had a massive stroke. it was… devastating. his entire body was paralyzed, and he was lucky he didn’t end up brain dead. his resulting condition, as you saw, was basically an extreme version of sleep paralysis. his brain functions, and he is aware of his surroundings, but he can’t move or reply to anything. i couldn’t imagine living like that. it must be terrible, lying like that unable to do anything.” his ears redden, as if he’s just realized he started to drift off-topic.

“anyway, that’s obviously no way to live. finally, cheongug got released to the public. originally, we brought it up for therapeutic purposes. so he could finally interact with stuff, y’know? we let him try it a bit, see how he liked it. as it turns out, to him, the five hour weekly limit isn’t enough. he expressed an interest in… moving to cheongug. going as a resident, rather than a tourist.”

junmyeon nods. yifan had told him that last time they met.

“unfortunately for yifan-hyung, that decision is out of his hands. ethically speaking, it should be his choice whether or not he wants to commit suicide, but his medical faculties and rights still belong to his blood family. his biological mother was contacted after the stroke, and i guess she’s super religious or something, because she will not allow his euthanization under any circumstances. we even had them meet in cheongug so he could try and convince her, but it didn’t work.” chanyeol’s lips twitch –– he doesn’t frown, but he’s the furthest from happy junmyeon has seen so far. “she also apparently doesn’t take too kindly to him marrying a dude, either. as if it wasn’t enough that she preferred he suffer in the real world than be happy in the fake one.”

“so that’s why you’re marrying him?” junmyeon queries. “so you can authorize his assisted suicide?”

the other brightens considerably. it’s almost like a switch was flipped. “yup. yifan-hyung’s a pretty cool guy. apparently fans used to visit his bed like a shrine; it was a little crazy. but i was, like, a kid when that happened.” he grins, but it’s melancholy. “i think he deserves to be happy. to do what he wants with his life, even if it means ending it.”

“but isn’t that unethical?” kyungsoo interjects. junmyeon didn’t even know he was paying attention to the conversation. “you’re his nurse. he’s vulnerable.”

chanyeol purses his lips. “yeah, but… people have gotten away with it before. and my record is spotless. i’d be more likely to get a slap on the wrist than removed form the registry.”

“i see…”

“… what if…,” junmyeon murmurs, voice sounding weak to his own ears. he feels a little light-headed. it must show on his face, since kyungsoo leans over to fuss with his tubes. “what if you didn’t have to get a slap on the wrist at all?”

chanyeol cocks his head, puzzled. he looks like a puppy. “um, what are you talking about, junmyeon-ssi?”

“he loves me,” junmyeon says. he did not intend to be that blunt. kyungsoo bumps his head on the back of his chair with a yelp. “and i love him. i could marry him. how fast can you get a priest here?”

he expects rejection, a shake of kyungsoo’s head. there wasn’t exactly time for deliberation; the thought just popped into his head at that very moment. he didn’t mean to voice it aloud, and definitely did not expect chanyeol to humor him. kyungsoo withholds any objections he has, instead muttering, “we _could_ do it…”

and that’s all they need.

at an almost comical speed, he’s being spirited off back to yifan’s room and letting kyungsoo place the little white nodes on his temples and forehead. chanyeol is doing the same to yifan, who is apparently awake –– or so his brain activity says. is it a hasty decision? maybe. more than a little irrational? yes. junmyeon doesn’t care.

“you’re good,” kyungsoo tells him, accompanying the statement with a thumbs up. he turns to chanyeol. “ready when you are.”

“i’m all done too.”

kyungsoo removes the remote control from the tiny console, counting to five. he presses the button, and junmyeon feels a lurch at the back of his skull.

junmyeon blinks, and when he opens his eyes, he’s no longer staring at yifan’s old, prone form in his bed. he digs his toes into the sand beneath him and looks up at the porch of the oh-so familiar beach house. yifan is sitting on the railing, seemingly trying to keep a gummy smile off his face. he’s failing miserably.

yifan barks out an incredulous, nervous laugh. “what’s going on, myeon?”

junmyeon scrambles up the rickety steps and all but throws himself into yifan. “i don’t have much time –– do you love me?”

yifan kisses him, pulling junmyeon into his arms. “yes? i thought we understood this.”

“good!” junmyeon chirps. “will you marry me?”

that gives yifan pause. his mouth falls open and his eyes widen. he gapes several times like a fish. “what –– marry? _you_?”

“yes? we’ve gotta make this quick, fan ––”

“yes!” it’s loud and direction in junmyeon’s face, but he finds himself shouting happily with yifan too. “yes, yes, yes, yes, i will marry you, kim junmyeon!” yifan’s lips on him are so searing that junmyeon doesn’t even feel himself being pulled back into his own body.

…

they’ve fallen into a rather comfortable routine, if junmyeon says so himself. the ceremony itself had been nothing like the spectacle of his and yixing’s, instead a brief, private affair of which only a bemused kyungsoo and a weepy chanyeol were witnesses. immediately after getting married, he’d gone and signed off on the euthanasia, and it all happened within the span of one day.

he can’t imagine how yifan’s birth mother must feel about this spectacularly quick series of events, but given her attitude toward her son and his desires, junmyeon couldn’t care less about the disrespectful old bitch.

even if he was effectively smothering yifan with a pillow (per yifan’s own wishes), junmyeon couldn’t help the feeling of glee that blossomed in his chest. chanyeol had brought yifan to cheongug and then slowly turned off all of the machinery that was keeping him alive. somehow, the singular, protracted noise of the flatline and the white sheet drawn over yifan’s corpse did not tear his heart out like it did with yixing.

if nothing else, this was a new beginning. zhang yixing was gone forever by his own choice, but park chanyeol had submitted wu yifan’s nodes to the company behind cheongug, and within forty-eight hours, they had uploaded yifan’s consciousness to cheongug. he was, for all intents and purposes, a permanent inhabitant of cheongug. no more five hour limits, no restrictions on homes and locations. he was actually living in another dimension.

yifan might not be _here_ , but he’s _somewhere_.

and better yet, he’s somewhere junmyeon can visit.

he hasn’t gone back to the house party in almost two months –– despite being granted access to different places, yifan still lives at the beach house. it’s been _two months_ since yifan moved. kyungsoo even morbidly jokes that it is the strength of junmyeon’s love for yifan that has him clinging on so desperately to life well past his estimated ‘expiration date.’ junmyeon has no doubt that he’s correct.

after all, it’s something to look forward to every week. he needs to make it through the other six days to see him again. he and yifan have explored nearly all there is to do at the beach –– they went swimming, snorkeling, parasailing, walked along and under the pier, observed tidepools, made love on yifan’s waterbed (in addition to several other places). junmyeon hadn’t really realized he wasn’t using cheongug to its full potential. maybe all he needed was a partner in crime –– and that’s where yifan came in.

as far as junmyeon could tell, yifan was beyond happy in cheongug –– he was ecstatic. everything was so new to him, and he observed and studied and investigated everything with a sort of childlike wonder. junmyeon was glad that he’d allowed yifan this –– even more that he got to call yifan his husband.

he hasn’t removed the title from yixing in his memory; rather the two are sharing it. junmyeon missed the blissful joy of being a newlywed, and adores that he gets to watch yifan experiencing it for the first time.

( it strikes him again, that feeling of belonging. it was like the one he felt at his first wedding, but smaller in scale. he was meant to be here. yifan wanted him here. )

every saturday, they would do something new. from noon to five pm, junmyeon would be in cheongug, doing whatever it was yifan spent the past week researching. last time, they went parachuting. this week, or so he’s told, is going to be a bit more subdued. they’re going stargazing. 

occasionally, there are some immersion breaking experiences, like the one this time. yifan needs junmyeon to change his time settings, because he’s just another portion of data coded in to cheongug, so that they meet in the evening rather than the time relative to junmyeon’s entering the reality.

( it hasn’t ever really occurred to junmyeon that the yifan in cheongug isn’t the real, _real_ yifan. in essence, he _is_ , but rather than yifan’s consciousness when it dwelled inside his actual body, it’s instead a copy created by the analysis of the nodes. apparently, chanyeol was supposed to have sent in further data of yifan’s brain activity to create an accurate avatar of yifan.

but nobody ever thinks of the process as creating an eerily similar fake. the person’s physical body dies while their mind is in cheongug. they’ve _moved_. even if it were was a naïve and simple way to look at things, junmyeon would consider this to be the truth. it’s easier that way. )

when satisfied with the artificially generated hour, yifan drives them out to a nearby cliff overlooking the sea. junmyeon notes with some consternation and confusion that he’s been suspiciously quiet the whole time, but elects not to comment on it. back when he was alive, yifan wasn’t nearly as talkative as he was in cheongug. maybe the novelty and its excitement was wearing off on him, and he was just getting back to normal.

instead of laying out flimsy implications and poorly-worded questions, junmyeon simply lays his hand on top of yifan’s which had found a comfortable place on top of junmyeon’s thigh. he wonders whether he should open his mouth at all, but the silence is awkward and it’s never been that between them since they got married. so naturally, the only way to get rid of it is to break it. “still like the stars, do you?” junmyeon says, trying his best to be casual. “mr. galaxy. i remember when you wanted to be an astronaut.”

yifan chuckles lightly. “i never stopped loving space. it’s just that i realized you needed to be _smart_ to get up there. besides. i ended up being a star in my own right, didn’t i?”

the wind whips through the roofless jeep, and junmyeon can’t help but dart forward to peck yifan’s cheek. the action makes older flush, and junmyeon laughs. there’s just something about yifan’s smile that makes him _melt_. he could stare at it forever.

coming to a stop just a little bit off from the edge of the cliff, yifan puts his car in park and hops out, not bothering to open the door. he rounds the front and graciously gets junmyeon’s however, eliciting a giggle from the younger. “such a gentleman,” he snickers.

“i aim to please.” yifan gathers a blanket from the trunk and lays it on the hood of his car. smoothing out any wrinkles, he hums absently. it’s almost picturesque, spending lazy nights with him, doing nothing but just watching the universe work.

yifan lays down first, then has junmyeon rest on top of his arm. the latter has barely settled before being tugged against a strong and sturdy frame. he inhales his husband’s scent, smiling against his clavicle. “i’m supposed to be watching the sky, not your pecs.”

“i know, just… let me you hold you first.” there’s a nose pressing into the crown of his head, accompanied with four –– no, five –– pecks. “i could never get enough of this.”

“sap,” junmyeon whispers, and manages to claw his way out of yifan’s embrace and into a position where he can comfortably stargaze –– which was, after all, what they came to do in the first place. if they wanted to get frisky, they could’ve just stayed home.

for a good chunk of time, stargaze is what he does. it’s something he’s never really had the luxury of doing, always dwelling in locations with rather sizeable amounts of light pollution. certain parts of changsha had afforded the pastime, but he didn’t live nearby and would’ve had to go out of his way to enjoy it. another benefit of cheongug, he supposes.

yifan murmurs names of constellations and star systems in his ear, picking them out with a haphazardly thrown index finger. besides appreciating the aesthetics of space, though, random tidbits about the galaxy didn’t matter to junmyeon –– unless it was from a long time ago, and the galaxy in question was far, far away. for whatever reason, a fictional universe captivated him better than the real one (or an imitation of the real one, as the case may be).

he adores this, the leisure and relief. junmyeon doesn’t stress much anymore over his impending doom, but it’s nice to forget. yifan does that well. he distracts him from reality, protects him from falling into that trap of thinking too much.

perhaps his escapism is a tad unhealthy –– but escapism as a concept kind of is, anyway, in excess. it might be nice to relax for a bit, but the real world will still be there to slap you in the face once you’re back.

not that junmyeon cares. that’s something that comes with age. suddenly, few things matter that much.

he almost falls asleep to the sound of yifan’s voice, eyelids growing heavier by the second. he’d gone on for quite a bit about the great bear, and junmyeon had hummed absently to indicate he was sort of listening. yifan’s next words, following a brief pause, however, have nothing to do with bright balls of gas floating about in the universe. they startle him back to awareness.

“how much longer until you’re here with me forever?”

the query is so out of nowhere that it makes his head shoot straight up. he draws his brows together in incredulity. this was a discussion they glossed over, but both got agitated and decided to shelve it. now was not the best time to bring it up again. “what are you talking about, fan? i already told you i wasn’t going to move to cheongug.”

yifan’s face twists. “but that was before –– we’re _married_ now, myeon, and you’re going to leave me alone here for the rest of eternity? what happened to making up for lost time? we spent fifty years apart, and now that we’re together you’re all ready to just disappear on me?”

he did _not_ want to get into this conversation, not now, not ever. junmyeon sits up and turns away. “fan, i made my choice years ago. i’m going to die naturally. and that’ll be the end of that.”

“and when will that be, huh? your doctors have been telling you since forever that you’re going to die. you will, one day. maybe soon. and i won’t even know when you do, junmyeon. one saturday, you’re just not going to show up, and i’ll be scared out of my wits wondering if you just _slept in_ that day or if you _fucking died_.”

“i’ll put it in my will that someone should find you and tell ––”

“you don’t understand!” a large fist comes smashing down on the bright orange hood, creating an ugly, hollow clang. “i’m going to end up here all alone without you. i took my own goddamn life because i wanted to be here every single minute of every goddamn day. at first it was because i wanted to _live_ for once, but then, part of it was because i wanted to stay here and be with _you_!

“you told me the reason you didn’t want to be with me in the beginning was because you were dying. big fucking whoop, so was i. maybe not physically, because god knows they shoved as much metal and plastic in me as they could to keep me barely functional, but i was _rotting_ away in that… that _husk_ they called my body. you? you still get to open your eyes and see the world, you get to tell off a barista for getting your order wrong. you got to live your life while i was trapped in a dark fucking void from the age of thirty onwards.

“so, no, i don’t get why you’re so afraid of moving. what could be so terrible about utopia that you’d run away screaming? how is this place any different than the world you lived in, the one _you_ got to experience? really, i want to know. is it your husband? the one that’s _not_ me? of course he’s not here. if he was, you probably wouldn’t have given me the fucking time of day. so what if he wanted to die? were you really that much of a submissive house-husband that you’d be willing to pitch yourself into nothingness because of him? if that’s the case, he’s just a selfish prick for ––”

junmyeon doesn’t even register that he moved to slap yifan across the face until his palm makes contact with yifan’s cheek. the force of the blow has the older’s head swinging to the side, eyes wide in surprise.

“how _dare_ you?” junmyeon sobs. he’s too late to stop the first tear from falling, which just leads to a waterfall soon afterwards. he scrambles clumsily off the hood. “you have _no_ idea what my reasons are, or what it’s like, to have been by someone’s side for fifty years, to have watched them laugh, cry, scream. to _love_ them unequivocally for so long that they’re a part of you, and when they’re gone it’s almost like the life has been drawn from your very body, the light just _gone_ from the world. you don’t know what it’s like to make a home with someone, or to create and raise a life.

“do you know why my husband chose to die, yifan? we had a song. zhang zitao. our little taozi. we fed, clothed, and cared for him for a whole eighteen years, until he decided to voyage into the world on his own. but before he could grow old, my baby died. zitao was _thirty-nine years old_ , fan! he was a father, who never got to see his little girl grow to adulthood. he died, and there was no cheongug to save him. just that. kaput. thirty-nine years of existence, just gone with a single gunshot.

“ _that’s_ why yixing wanted to die. because there would’ve been no point in living forever in a world without our little boy. a world without the person that made our world spin, the boy we would’ve given our lives for, given anything for him to come back. you will _never_ understand what it’s like, yifan, to be a parent who outlived their child. to see the world change, have its ups and downs, get worse and better, and know that this should’ve been _theirs_ and never yours! you don’t have a right to talk about selfishness. is it so much to ask to be with my son?”

yifan is silent, the fight ripped out of him by his words and leaving him unable to respond. good junmyeon doesn’t want him to. he looks at his watch –– 4:55 pm. even better. he just wants to get out of here. he runs a hand through his hair and turns.

all it takes is one misstep to have him thrown off the cliff.

his pacing, simultaneous to his ranting, had taken him to the edge and the sharp whirl threw off his balance, not at all helped by the passing gust of wind. a screams is torn from his throat as he lifts off solid ground. he free-falls for a good twenty feet, before crashing into the side of the rock formation and rolling the rest of the way down to the damp sand.

junmyeon heaves himself onto his hands and knees, barely able to hear yifan’s horrified squawk from above. he gasps for breath. it doesn’t hurt, but that didn’t mean the air wasn’t still knocked out of his lungs. junmyeon’s vision begins to blur, but he can faintly make out yifan jogging across the sand to his side. it looks as though he’s trying to say something, but the sounds don’t make it to junmyeon’s ears.

he blinks once, and the world starts to turn white. he blinks twice, and he can no longer feel anything. he blinks three times, and he is staring out of the hospice window, cheeks wet.

baekhyun’s face comes into view, looking perplexed and concerned. “junmyeon-ahjussi, are you okay?”

junmyeon reaches up to swipe at his face hastily (or as hastily as he can). it’s too late; baekhyun’s already seen him. why he bothers to try to save face, he’s not sure. junmyeon’s evening was not supposed to end like this. his shoulders shake as he tries to minimize his crying. he answers honestly, “i don’t know baekhyun. i don’t know.”

…

almost immediately after he left yifan alone on the beach, junmyeon’s condition does everything but improve. his body deteriorates, and there is nothing he can do about it. there isn’t an hour where he doesn’t break out into a coughing fit that has him doubling over and his eyes watering, or where he doesn’t wheeze feebly for the forty minutes until it starts all over again. junmyeon knows full well what those morose looks baekhyun sends him mean. he’s running out of time –– now even faster than before.

it doesn’t stop him from living, though. at least, in the barest sense. he still eats, drinks, and sleeps. he talks to baekhyun and kyungsoo about their day. he goes out a lot more often since he stopped visiting cheongug –– both because he’s too weak to and because he’s too afraid to face yifan again.

he doesn’t regret pouring his heart out, but he does regret how it was done. of course yifan wouldn’t understand what it was like to have lived a full life. he’d been lucky enough to achieve massive success in the first (and only) five years of his career, but it was torn away from him by something he couldn’t control. it wasn’t fair of junmyeon to berate him for it; if yifan could’ve experienced even half the things junmyeon did, he would have.

he hasn’t gone to see yifan in three weeks. he’s not even sure if yifan wants to see him in the first place.

he doesn’t feel welcome in cheongug anymore. it’s yifan’s world, his territory, and it’s probably better that junmyeon stays out of it. he has a knack for making things exponentially worse.

back in the real world, kyungsoo is the only one who doesn’t treat him differently. baekhyun looks mournful even if junmyeon’s still here, and chanyeol, who had come to visit him once, appeared crestfallen at his weakened state. perhaps apathy and aloofness are kyungsoo’s way of coping. or maybe they just weren’t as close as junmyeon thought in the first place. regardless, this absence of a shift in dynamics allows the much-younger do kyungsoo to be a giver of advice. as if forty-something fewer years on this earth made him wiser. _perspective_ , junmyeon’s brain supplies. _he’s probably got plenty of it_.

his amazing conversation starter ends up being: “i think i’m ready to die.”

kyungsoo blanches and chokes on his own spit. he looks rather comically like an owl as he stares at junmyeon as the though the old man’s grown another head. maybe not as aloof as he thought. “okay,” kyungsoo eventually says. “i, um. what brought this on?”

junmyeon’s laugh is brittle, rattling away in his chest. “i think we both know i’m not going to get any better, and besides, i think i’ve done enough here. ticked off all the boxes on everyone’s cliché life achievements list. perhaps not the ‘establish a successful career’ one, but i was a teacher. i wasn’t going to get paid very much anyway. but still…” he pats the leather seat beside him. kyungsoo takes it. “i don’t know if i’m done yet. i’m done _here_ , since my body refuses to allow me to go on, but…”

“in cheongug you could do so much more,” kyungsoo finishes. “why don’t you move, then, junmyeon-ssi? sounds to me like you have more than enough reasons to go.”

he does, doesn’t he? he has ( _had_?) yifan, and he’d gone on to do so many things in cheongug that he couldn’t do while he was young. even without yifan, there was still so much he could experience and learn in cheongug on his own. the only difference between cheongug and the real world was that no one suffered. people couldn’t grow old and die. they had an entire universe worth of knowledge to explore. virtually anything was possible.

but every time he so much as considered moving, his mind flies back to yifan. was he waiting for him in cheongug? did he even love him anymore? even worse –– if he was so adamant about joining zitao and yixing after death, why did he dare to think about yifan? about living with him permanently? he had done a good job so far pushing the thoughts out of his head, but the threat of his own mortality hanging over his head have put things in perspective.

what was it that he really wanted?

yixing had given him everything he had ever needed, and yes, junmyeon had loved him –– would _forever_ love him for it –– but what was it that he _wanted_?

it’s only when junmyeon blinks and snaps out of his reverie that he notices kyungsoo had just asked him the same question. judging by the lightly flushed complexion and hesitant look in his eyes, the other had gone on quite the spiel. junmyeon internally coos. so he _does_ care. “i know you told me you promised your husband that you would die naturally, but…” kyungsoo purses his plump lips. “i… if i were him, i’d want you to do what makes _you_ happy, junmyeon-ssi. that’s what i think.”

he takes in the orderly’s earnest expression with a small smile. he’s right. yixing had been such a martyr that he definitely would’ve left the choice up to junmyeon. that, and he loved him enough to believe in his husband for almost fifty years and his choices, no matter how poor.

junmyeon clasps his hands in his lap, raising his eyes to the ceiling. _i’m sorry i broke my promise, yixing-ah. i wanted to be with you both. i really did. at the time i made you that promise, i was sincere. i also thought, at the time, that i loved you with all my heart. that wasn’t true._

_you see, yixing-ah, when i was young, long before you and i ever met, there was a boy who lived next door to me, and he was my whole world. as we grew older, things between us changed. we were no longer as close as we were before, and one day, he said something that really hurt me._

_i ran away from my home, from korea, because of him. and then i met you. i’m sorry i never told you about him. he just… hurt to much to remember._

_i found him again only now, xing-ah. we gave each other a really hard time, even if we still loved each other. he hurt me again, and i hurt him back. it wasn’t good on either of our parts. but even if we hurt each other, we made up. he makes me happy. so happy. like you and taozi did._

_it would be nice to be happy forever, wouldn’t it?_

he receives no response, but it feels like a massive weight’s been lifted off his chest. junmyeon coughs, nearly sending kyungsoo into panic mode, but he just waves him off and asks him to call the doctor. he knows what he’s going to do.

…

the first thing in cheongug that hits him as he arrives is the rush of sound. of waves crashing along the beach, seagulls squabbling over whatever meager meal they’ve found on the sand. a couple’s laughter as they frolic in the just-warm-enough waters.

he opens his eyes and examines the salt-whitened wood before him. junmyeon reaches out to touch a post and chuckles when the movement doesn’t catch the attention of the man before him.

yifan is sitting on the porch, like he always is. he has his nose buried in a book, legs crossed awkwardly as he slouches in a rocking chair. a relatively new addition to his furniture collection, junmyeon notes. he has the radio on, a woman’s voice crooning out of it.

_ooh, heaven is a place on earth._  
_they say in heaven love comes first._  
_we’ll make heaven a place on earth_. 

junmyeon makes his way up the steps delicately, careful not to give himself away with creaking floorboards. a part of him thinks yifan is being willfully ignorant towards his presence, but the look of total shock on his face as junmyeon yanks the book out of his hands proves otherwise.

he’s dyed his hair –– that’s the first thing junmyeon notices. blond always looked good on him, but the burnt umber hue makes him look… different. _warm_. he shares a color scheme with his car now. junmyeon likes it.

“you’re here,” yifan breathes. his disbelief is so strong it almost infects junmyeon. his fingers stretch out tentatively to touch junmyeon’s face, and they stiffen when junmyeon brings them to his cheek. “you’re actually _here_.”

junmyeon nods, but doesn’t get the chance to open his mouth before yifan whoops loudly –– enough to attract attention –– and sweeps him into his arms. yifan crushes their ips together as he swings junmyeon around, stuck apparently between wanting to smile and kiss him senseless. junmyeon stays suspended in the air for another few minutes, rendered breathless when yifan’s mouth refuses to part from his.

“you’re here,” yifan repeats, finally putting his smaller lover back on the ground.

he is. finally willing to allow himself to do what he really wants, to go after who he wants and fight for his desires. after almost a century of chasing happiness, he’s finally gotten it right before him. happiness that could last for eternity.

he was scared of eternity, before. too much of the unknown was never a good thing. but with yifan at his side, eternity didn’t seem so terrifying anymore.

“i am,” junmyeon whispers. he gets on his tiptoes to kiss yifan again (oh god, he could never get enough). “i’m here. forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [seokjin-jpeg](http://seokjin-jpeg.tumblr.com/).  
> find me on twitter at [gnatran](http://twitter.com/gnatran).


End file.
